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Portrait of comic Cal Wilson wins Archibald’s Packing Room Prize
By Helen Pitt
First-time Archibald entrant and Packing Room Prize 2023 winner Andrea Huelin started following New Zealand-born comedian Cal Wilson’s Instagram account during Melbourne’s long COVID-19 lockdowns.
The pink-haired, Melbourne-based Wilson’s homemade headdresses, made with a glue gun, old dolls’ heads and Christmas decorations, made Queensland-based Huelin laugh out loud.
Winner of the Archibald Packing Room Prize Andrea Huelin with her sitter Cal Wilson in the Art Gallery of NSW on Thursday.Credit: Janie Barrett
The Cairns-based former journalist and broadcaster asked to meet the colourful comic, known for her appearances on Spicks and Specks, to paint her for the Archibald. If nothing else, they knew they would have a good laugh.
After three weeks of obsessive work, Huelin is now the winner of the $3000 Packing Room Prize.
“We bonded over our love of shiny things,” said Wilson, who has just finished shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and opens at the Sydney Comedy Festival next Friday night.
The Archibald 2023 Packing Room Prize winner, Andrea Huelin’s Clown Jewels, a portrait of comedian Cal Wilson.
“I’ve always loved my glue gun and to give things a second life, and it is so lovely that something so amazing has come out of a really hard time. It’s a very grown-up way to immortalise something very frivolous.
“I went into it with the idea of mocking the sort of Victorian-style formal ‘lady’ style portraits,” said Huelin. “So I started painting her in her regalia and on a sort of 19th-century throne, and she came up with the title the Clown Jewels’.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to receive this,” the artist said at the announcement at the Art Gallery of NSW on Thursday. “It means such a lot to me as an artist from a regional centre to win.”
The Packing Room Prize winner was selected by a panel of three packers, which for the first time includes two women, Monica Rudhar and Alexis Wildman, and their male counterpart Timothy Dale, with a combined 19 years of Archibald Prize unpacking experience between them.
“Andrea’s work jumped out at us as soon as it arrived. Cal’s been such a mainstay on Australian television for two decades,” the judges said.
Art Gallery of NSW director Michael Brand said the 32nd Packing Room Prize was decided equally among the three.
They paid tribute to now-retired former head packer Brett Cuthbertson, who over the decades has tended towards hyper-real portraits of celebrities such as last year’s Packing Room Prize-winning portrait of New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi, and singer Kate Ceberano in 2021.
This year, for the first time in the Archibald’s 102-year history, there are more women painters as finalists (30) than men (27). This year also has the highest number of finalist works by Aboriginal artists, 38 across the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes.
A total of 949 entries were received for the Archibald this year, the second-highest total ever after 2020, the year of COVID-lockdown.
Among the 57 Archibald 2023 finalists are portraits of musicians such as Cold Chisel singer/songwriter Don Walker by Michelle Hiscock; Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns by Matt Adnate, a Victorian artist best known for his street art; and singer Montaigne by Julia Gutman.
One half of electronic music duo Electric Fields, Zaachariaha Fielding, has been captured by Michael Simms, and a likely sentimental favourite, Seeing Ruby, of Australian singer, songwriter and Aboriginal activist Archie Roach, who died in July last year, was painted by Anh Do.
Actor Sam Neill, sporting a crocheted pig’s head in honour of his pigs Angelica and Byron, appears in Sam I Am by nine-time Archibald finalist James Powditch, who last year painted Laura Tingle, in a portrait called The Fourth Estate.
Actor Noni Hazlehurst has been captured in a poignant portrait called Through the Window by 2022 Darling Portrait Prize winner Jaq Grantford, and actor Claudia Karvan features in Claudia (the GOAT) by Sydney artist Laura Jones.
Two Sydney politicians have made the final cut, independent councillor for the City of Sydney Yvonne Weldon has been painted by Luke Cornish in Barrambiyarra (Awaken) and independent member for Sydney in the NSW parliament, Alex Greenwich, has been hand-sewn by Jason Jowett.
Sports stars who were sitters selected as finalists include rugby league fullback Latrell Mitchell, sporting a South Sydney jersey and painted in huge format by former Archibald finalist Zoe Young, and boxer Harry Garside by John Hillier.
Former Sydney Morning Herald journalists Erik Jensen and Katharine Murphy (now working for The Saturday Paper and The Guardian respectively) were painted by Angela Brennan and Judith Sinnamon.
Filipina artist Marikit Santiago has painted Hallowed Be Thy Name, a family portrait in collaboration with her children Maella, Santi Mateo and Sarita Santiago.
The Packing Room Prize began in 1991 and is jokingly referred to among artists as “the kiss of death” for selecting the $100,000 Archibald winner, who will be announced on Friday, May 5.
The Archibald, Sulman and Wynne exhibitions open at the Art Gallery of NSW on May 6.
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