As it happened: Portrait of Justene Williams wins prestigious Archibald award

The $100,000 Archibald Prize winner is Julie Fragar for her portrait of Justene Williams, Flagship Mother Multiverse.

It was a unanimous decision made at 7.20am.

Fragar said she painted Williams for three reasons:

1. She is a dear friend.
2. She is an extraordinary artist.
3. Fragar wished to honour the “multiverse of artwork” spinning out of Williams.

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist, Julie Fragar ‘Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene)’, oil on canvas, 240 x 180.4 cm Sitter: Justene WilliamsCredit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

Fragar thanked previous gallery director Edmund Capon, who discovered her, and Michael Brand who encouraged her to keep entering the prize.

When she was informed of the win this morning, Fragar burst into tears.

“It doesn’t get better than this,” she said.

This is the 15th time that the Archibald Prize has been awarded to a female artist.

Thanks for joining us for the 2025 Sulman, Wynne and Archibald prizes.

About 14 per cent of you, dear readers, picked Tsering Hannaford’s Meditation on time as your favourite portrait in our poll, while 13 per cent of you loved Jaq Grantford’s portrait of the Kidman sisters.

Until next year, thanks for sharing the event with us.

This masthead’s photographer was at the NSW Art Gallery and captured the below photo of Archibald Prize winner Julie Fragar and friend Justene Williams.

2025 Archibald Prize winner Julie Fragar, right, and her subject Justene WilliamsCredit: Sitthixay Ditthavong

Fragar’s winning portrait, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), was sketched in one sitting, then put together over three months, with the help of photographs, in her Brisbane studio.

Read more about Julie and Justene here. 

Fragar is speaking after winning the coveted $100,000 prize.

“Thinking back to myself as a 17-year-old showing up at the Sydney College of Arts – a kid from country NSW – it’s incredible to think I have won the Archibald Prize,” she said.

“Portrait painting wasn’t taken seriously in the 1990s as it is today. I have always regarded the Archibald Prize as a place that understood the value of portraiture.”

Fragar and Williams are colleagues at the Queensland College of Arts, where Fragar is head of painting and Williams is head of sculpture.

“There is nobody like Justene,” Fragar wrote in her artist statement. “She thinks big and makes bigger, deploying everything from car bodies to opera singers to make work as fearless and feeling as she is.

“Flagship Mother in the title comes from Justene’s recent endurance performance in New Zealand titled Making do rhymes with poo. It was about the labour of getting by. For Justene, like many women artists, that means the labour of a day job, of making art to deadlines, and the labour (and love) of being a mother.

“In the lower left of the painting, you can see Justene’s daughter Honore looking up at her mum half in awe and half asking if this is what she will have to manage too.”

The $100,000 Archibald Prize winner is Julie Fragar for her portrait of Justene Williams, Flagship Mother Multiverse.

It was a unanimous decision made at 7.20am.

Fragar said she painted Williams for three reasons:

1. She is a dear friend.
2. She is an extraordinary artist.
3. Fragar wished to honour the “multiverse of artwork” spinning out of Williams.

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist, Julie Fragar ‘Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene)’, oil on canvas, 240 x 180.4 cm Sitter: Justene WilliamsCredit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

Fragar thanked previous gallery director Edmund Capon, who discovered her, and Michael Brand who encouraged her to keep entering the prize.

When she was informed of the win this morning, Fragar burst into tears.

“It doesn’t get better than this,” she said.

This is the 15th time that the Archibald Prize has been awarded to a female artist.

Jude Rae has won the $50,000 Wynne Prize for Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal.

“What a great field to be part of,” Rae said after accepting the win.

“I live and work in Redfern in Gadigal country, on the Indigenous footpath between harbour and Botany Bay. I’m a painter who can’t quite believe their eyes. In the big cities, we can’t see the stars, but we should remember they are there.”

Jude Rae. Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminaloil on linen. 200 x 150.4 cm

Artist Gene A’Hern has won the $40,000 Sulman Prize for Sky Painting.

In his artist statement, A’hern wrote, “Painted with expansive movements to capture a sense of scale and colour, this painting unfolded as I immersed myself in skywatching, while reflecting on the ceremonial choreography of the surrounding environment.”

Gene A’Hern’s Sky painting, oil and oil stick on board. 240x240cm

“It conveys a sensation of nature’s gestures, composed to resonate from within, translating an omnipresence that comes from dust and returns to dust,” he wrote.
“The work draws on charged memories – birds singing in harmony, branches sighing in the wind, the closing curtain of the setting sun, all forming a living landscape that I breathe with and through. For me, the sky and the Blue Mountains intertwine and reveal themselves as a place of origin, deep memory and belonging.”

Director of Art Gallery NSW Maud Page launches formal proceedings, saying the Archibald celebrates community and the art that moves us and gives us a “nudge” towards being good humans.

She congratulates all finalists.

Lots of comparisons are being drawn between the papal conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV this morning.

First-year chair Michael Rose tells us the white smoke is billowing. We believe the winning sitter and artist will be present.

Stand by for the papal red curtain reveal.

Readers of tea leaves often look to the gallery’s hang for hints to the prize winner.

Curator Beatrice Gralton has placed Kelly Maree’s portrait of media personality Jackie O in a blue ball gown, and Mostafa Azimitabar’s portrait of activist Grace Tame, in the opening room.

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist, Kelly Maree ‘Jackie O’, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 205.2 x 144.9 cm Sitter: Jackie OCredit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

But it is Julie Fragar’s portrait of Justene Williams that dominates sight lines.

So, too, Richard Lewer’s self-portrait. Fragar’s suspended black and white rendering of Williams seems to be surging in late betting.

It hangs to the left of the podium where the media are gathered. Behind the stage is Jeremy Eden’s portrait of Australian actor Felix Cameron, Fiona Lowry’s blue ode to Ken Done, and Jaq Grantford’s Kidman sisters.

In the same room is Vincent Namatjira’s King Dingo and Linda Gold’s Still Standing and Fighting, a sitting portrait of former AFL footballer, Neale Daniher.

For all those trivia and art buffs, here are a few fun stats to digest:

• For the first time this year, the number of female finalists across the three prizes outnumbers that of males. Women artists took out the Archibald Prize in 2023 and 2024: Julia Gutman, who was just 29, and Laura Jones, who was only the 12th woman to win the prize.

• Representation of Indigenous artists in all three prizes is growing. The first Indigenous artist to exhibit was Robert Campbell Jnr in 1989 with a portrait of musician Mac Silva. Vincent Namatjira was the first Indigenous artist to win the Archibald, in 2020. He’s a finalist this year in the Archibald and Wynne prizes.
• This year there are 2394 entries across all three prizes. It’s a record year for the $40,000 Sulman Prize, awarded for best genre, subject painting or mural, with 732 entries.
• The smallest work in the Archibald is Callum Worsfold’s self-portrait and the largest is Marcus Wills’ portrait of 13-year-old Cormac Wright.