Sydney artist’s Archibald Prize portrait replaced by daughter’s ARTEXPRESS work

Sydney’s Powditch family has pretty much got a mortgage on the Art Gallery of NSW. Or, at least, one room of it.

Sydney’s Powditch family has pretty much got a mortgage on the Art Gallery of NSW. Or, at least, one room of it.

James Powditch’s portrait of Anthony Albanese hung in the Archibald Prize until a few days ago, when the portrait prize made way for the annual ARTEXPRESS exhibition.

Installed in ARTEXPRESS is a work by Powditch’s daughter Ella — in almost exactly the same spot as her dad’s portrait of the Federal Opposition Leader hung.

ARTEXPRESS artist Ella Powditch. Picture: Richard Dobson

Ella’s work, My Cabinet of Curiosities, is a vintage wooden cabinet with a different collage or assemblage in each of its ten drawers.

One drawer is themed on butterflies while another features flowers.

Ella, 18, of Stanmore, worked on the piece whenever her school, Sydney Secondary College Blackwattle Bay Campus, was locked down during COVID-19 last year.

“I was walking my dog Juno one day and saw this (cabinet) on the side of the road,” she said.

“I went home and stumbled on ‘cabinets of curiosity’, and remembered visiting museums when I was younger and seeing all the beautiful butterflies pinned down in the cabinets.”

Sydney artist James Powditch with his daughter Ella. Picture: Richard Dobson

James Powditch said Ella showed little interest in art as a child, in spite of his flourishing art practice and the fame of her grandfather, the painter Peter Powditch (whose work has often been shown at the AGNSW).

But Ella’s interest in ordering and cataloguing, as shown in My Cabinet of Curiosities, reminded James of himself.

“I’m so unbelievably proud of her. Seriously,” James said, adding it was “mind-blowing” that her work is on view just two metres from where his portrait so recently hung.

James Powditch’s Archibald Prize portrait Once upon a time in Marrickville. Picture: Supplied

Ella has enrolled in an arts degree with an advertising component, not seeing her future in art.

ARTEXPRESS this year showcases 48 artworks selected from 8617 student works submitted for the 2020 HSC.

Curator Louise Halpin said the exhibition offers an insight into the hearts and minds of young people during a 12-month period marked by bushfires and the pandemic.

ARTEXPRESS is open, free, from today until April 5.

James Powditch has been there and done that — he was in ARTEXPRESS in 1985 when it was held at Centrepoint.