The powerful portraits that didn’t make the Archibald Prize cut

Entering the Art Gallery of NSW’s Archibald Prize for artist Rodney Pople is akin to surrendering yourself for public execution.

For his self-portrait, Jesus, Pople has been spared the media spectacle, having missed out on the final cut of this year’s $100,000 prize, due to be announced on Friday.

Rodney Pople’s Jesus.

But his painterly work has been selected for the Salon des Refusés, at Sydney’s S.H Ervin Gallery, an exhibition of second chances which has run alongside the Archibald Prize since 1992.

Pople’s Jesus riffs on his 2008 Archibald Prize entry, showing him kneeling before the sandstone edifice of the Art Gallery of NSW surrendering to a row of gun-carrying soldiers in high heels.

Pople had been on a long drive in the southern states of America last October when he turned the corner to see a huge yellow sign with Jesus on it. “I nearly ran off the road it was so powerful.”

His work also takes inspiration from Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808 painted in 1814.

“Too many artists are playing it too safe. I feel art should have a licence to be on the edge, and that’s what the Jesus sign is saying.”

Top of mind was Creative Australia’s sacking of Khaled Sabsabi in February as Australia’s Venice Biennale representative, a decision Pople, a winner of the Sulman Prize, describes as “dreadful”. “They should never have caved in to censorship,” he says.

The Salon takes its name from the renegade French Impressionists of the 1860s who held a breakaway exhibition from the French Academy, and is regarded as the “alternative selection” to the official Archibald and Wynne Prizes. Among this year’s 32 portraits are paintings by former Archibald winners Wendy Sharpe (1996), and Lewis Miller (1998).

Kate Beynon’s Rali and the Spirits is a finalist in the 2025 Salon des Refusés.

Overall, works are selected for quality, diversity, humour and experimentation, and different approaches to portraiture and responses to the landscape.

This year’s Salon des Refusés selection was made by Katrina Cashman, manager of the National Art School Gallery, and Jane Watters, director of the S.H. Ervin Gallery.

Watters found the 904 entries to the Archibald Prize were of a good standard this year.

“To narrow down the Wynne Prize entries was especially difficult for us,” she said. “There are a lot of big works so lots of ambition on show in both prizes. I think people are being bold to impress the judges with scale and complexity of the image.”

Veteran ABC economics commentator Alan Kohler has been painted by David Beaumont, among a handful of prominently named sitters to feature in the alternative Archibald. Most subjects are artists, however.

Jon Campbell’s Pain Hope Work Sing.

“It’s hard to get sitters these days,” notes Watters.

Lawyer-turned-artist Jacqueline Hennessy painted twice Moran Portrait Prize winner, Les Rice. Joshua Yeldham created an incredibly detailed self-portrait with the owl a recurring image, representing wisdom and predatory instincts.

Artist-academic Oliver Watts painted curator Clothilde Bullen, and Melbourne artist Jon Campbell artistic collaborators, Yhonnie Scarce and Lisa Radford.

Salon des Refusés runs from May 10 to July 27.