The Art Gallery of New South Wales today announced Julia Gutman as the winner of the 2023 Archibald Prize for her painting Head in the sky, feet on the ground. The oil and textile collage depicts his friend Australian singer Jessica Cerro, who performs under the name Montaigne. Gutman in a statement explained that she wanted her subject’s pensive pose to mirror that of Egon Schiele in 1917 Woman sitting with bent knee in order to show the duality of the public and private personalities of the singer. “Like Edith, Montaigne’s figure is distorted: both angular and soft, figurative and imaginary. She sits in a vaguely suggested landscape, fragmented by a translucent screen, both online and offline,” she said.
Gutman was a first-time finalist for the $100,000 prize, which recognizes the best portrait of an individual “distinguished in art, literature, science or politics” painted by an Australian resident. She is the thirteenth woman to win the award since its founding in 1921; her portrait is the first of a singer to win this honor. Montaigne, a Eurovision 2021 runner-up who attracted a massive following of teenagers to live-streaming platform Twitch, said in a statement: “I certainly didn’t see it coming, not because I don’t believe not because of Julia’s incredible talent and warm heart, but because you never think this stuff is going to happen to you.
Zaachariaha Fielding, half of electro-pop duo Electric Fields and hailing from Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands in South Australia, has won the $50,000 Wynne Prize, awarded annually for a landscape painting depicting an Australian landscape or figurative sculpture . Fielding was honored for his painting Inma, which illustrates the movements and sounds of Mimili, the small community in which he was raised. “The atmosphere of this work is full of sound, movement and teaching,” Fielding said in a statement. “It’s for babies and it’s about them being taught by the masters, their elders.”
Artist Luritja Doris Bush Nungarrayi has been awarded the $40,000 Sulman Prize for her work Mamunya ngalyananyi (Monster to come). The honor is bestowed in recognition of a painting subject, genre painting or mural project. His work, featuring colorful creatures scattered across a background, depicts what the artist in a statement called “menacing and malevolent spirits” known as Momor “the cheeky ones”.
The winning works will be exhibited at AGNSW alongside those of the three prize finalists from May 6 to September 3.
