The ‘big sadness of life’ and humour behind this year’s Archibald Prize finalists

Among this year’s 57 Archibald Prize finalists it is the depiction of sadness, joy and the everyday that moves the Art Gallery of NSW’s new director Maud Page.

“Why would Reg Mombassa turn his phone camera on himself on the hospital bed with an oxygen tube?” she asks. “He said he’d rather spend the time with himself and confinement made it easy.”

Mombassa, otherwise known as Chris O’Doherty, painted himself during a two-week hospital stay to have his prostate, lymph glands and appendix removed.

His grim face is the second self-portrait of his to make the Archibald cut, one of 12 painted “selfies” that are finalists this year.

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa)’s Self-Portrait with Nose Tube.Credit: Art Gallery of NSW / Jenni Carter

“I find self-portraits easier to set up as I am readily available and will not complain about a negative or ugly portrayal,” O’Doherty notes in his artist statement. “Plus I don’t need to be stuck in a room with a stranger.”

Page sees humour in Abdul Abdullah’s portrait of artist friend Jason Phu on horseback, named the Packing Room Prize winner on Thursday, and in Phu’s own entry of Hugo Weaving slogging it out in the rough and tumble of The Matrix. It, too, is up for the $100,000 prize to be announced next Friday.

First-time finalist Peter Ke Heng Chen imbibes deadpan humour and the rough brushstrokes of Van Gogh to portray his comedian son Aaron as a “little fish in New York”.

Humour enables people to “cope with the world and with ourselves”, Page says, and art’s ability to remind us of what binds partly explains the Archibald Prize’s appeal.

The Art Gallery of NSW received 904 entries this year to a prize arguably Australia’s best known, and for which everyone seems to hold an opinion.

Of the 57 finalists, 37 per cent are first-timers. Most subjects painted were other artists (22), followed by self-portraits (12), figures of stage and screen (6), music (3) and media and journalism (3).

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist Jaq Grantford”s Sisters. Sitters: Antonia Kidman and Nicole Kidman.Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

If celebrities felt a little thinner on the walls this year it’s because more than 60 per cent of finalists found inspiration in fellow artists, or like Mombassa, preferred to paint a self-portrait.

Entries are growing for the Archibald’s sister categories of the Wynne and Sulman prizes, the latter is experiencing a record year. South Australian Indigenous artist Robert Fielding is the lone artist to be named a finalist in all three prizes.

Page notes the “big sadness of life” that lies behind the Kidman sisters’ Christmas Eve get-together captured by artist Jaq Grantford. This was their first Christmas without mother Janelle.

Linda Gold painted former AFL player and coach Neale Daniher, who has lost upper body movement to motor neurone disease.

He generously agreed to a short sitting at his home, in his most comfortable pose wearing a beanie and scarf and Essendon socks.

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist, Linda Gold’s Still Standing and Fighting. Sitter: Neale Daniher.Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

“All of these things remind us of our humanity and the role that art has to play in strengthening and nurturing it, and it’s precious,” Page says.

Among the most remarkable is Loribelle Spirovski’s painting of Indigenous composer and producer William Barton. She painted Barton with her fingers after an injury made painting painful. In the last four years, she came close to giving up on an artist’s life.

“Without a brush, painting was almost painless,” Spirovski wrote. “As the portrait painted itself, I felt alive in a way that I hadn’t for a long time.”

One of the most head-turning paintings is Marcus Wills’ Cormac in Arcadia, a dark and moving tableau piece that harks back to Greek mythology.

“It’ll be a crowd favourite because it’s an intriguing picture,” Archibald curator Beatrice Gralton predicts.

Jackie O by Kelly Maree and Peter Ke Heng Chen’s portrait of his comedian son Aaron.Credit: Janie Barrett

“It’s beautifully painted, monochromatic as well. [Thirteen-year-old Cormac] Wright witnesses a mythical scene from Greek antiquity in which King Lycaon of Arcadia tests Zeus’s divinity by serving him the flesh of his son Nyctimus.”

Wright appears twice, with his back to the viewer in a green hoodie, and then peering out from behind his mother, actor Lotte St Clair, and father, filmmaker and actor, Thomas Wright.

Gralton has been unpicking the connections inside the frame during the two weeks she has been deciding the finalists’ hang.

Wills, the 2006 Archibald winner, painted Lotte and Thomas for the Archibald in 2018 and 2017 retrospectively. Thomas Wright was the filmmaker behind The Stranger in which Cormac starred as the detective’s son. The movie dramatised the decade-long investigation that led to the arrest of the killer of Daniel Morcombe.

“There’s a history of painting happening here, but really what it is about for me is parents protecting their children and talking about difficult things in a contemporary context,” Gralton says.

“Artists keep telling these stories over and over again, whether it’s a mythological story or a biblical story. I think it’s how we make sense of the world.”

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.