Street artist wins Archibald Packing Room Prize for Baker Boy portrait

A portrait of Yolngu rapper and ARIA winner Baker Boy by street artist Matt Adnate has taken out the 2024 Archibald Packing Room prize.

The NSW-based artist, best known for his street and silo art, painted Rhythms of Heritage using 90 per cent spray paint and cans.

Packers Timothy Dale, Monica Rudhar and Alexis Wildman with artist Matt Adnate (second from left), who has won the Archibald Packing Room Prize for his portrait of Baker Boy.Credit: Janie Barrett

“Learning to paint on the streets was my artistic education,” said the two-time Archibald finalist, who last year painted Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns.

“Starting out as a street artist, I never dreamed I would win such an honour, I’m blown away.

“When you learn to paint on the street, you learn can-control – you have more control with spray paint,” Adnate said of the huge portrait, which measures 220 centimetres by 188.5 centimetres.

It took Adnate three weeks to paint the portrait in Melbourne, where Baker Boy – real name Danzal Baker – lives.

A portrait of Baker Boy by Matt Adnate, titled Rhythms of Heritage, has won the Packing Room Prize.

“If you zoom in close on the ‘fresh prince of Arnhem Land’, as he is known, you can see I’ve painted the Arnhem Land landscape in his eyes,” Adnate said.

Via video link, Baker Boy said: “Matt has painted me many times over the past seven years, and it is always an honour to be painted by him.”

The 2024 Archibald Prize received 1005 entries, with 30 from Indigenous painters – the highest number from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in the award’s history.

The $3000 Packing Room prize is judged by art gallery staff ahead of the announcement of the official Archibald Prize winner. Packing room staff Monica Rudhar, Alexis Wildman and Timothy Dale chose the winner from the 57 Archibald finalists.

The winner of the $100,000 Archibald Prize will be announced on Friday, June 7, along with the winners of the Wynne and Sulman prizes.

Other finalists in this year’s competition include Brisbane-based artist Eliza Bertwistle, who has painted student and sexual consent activist Chanel Contos, and Melbourne-based Burmese/Butchella woman Mia Boe, who painted Indigenous ABC TV presenter and former AFL player Tony Armstrong.

Sean Gladwell’s portrait of Julian Assange, painted from a sketch he did at Belmarsh prison in the UK, was one of the most inventive attempts at a live sitting, said Archibald curator Wayne Tunnicliffe.

“He couldn’t take art equipment in with him to prison, but he took £25 in with him to spend at the prison canteen and bought chocolate and sketched [Assange] in chocolate on his leftover £5 notes, using his fingernail as brush,” Tunnicliffe said.

Matildas forward Cortnee Vine, who became a national hero when she scored the winning penalty kick in a 7-6 shootout win over France in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup quarter-finals, has been captured in On the Bench and on the Cusp by NSW Central Coast painter Tim Owers.

Woolloomooloo-based realist painter Craig Handley has painted actor Anthony LaPaglia, currently playing the lead in Death of a Salesman in Sydney; singer Missy Higgins has been painted by her sister, Nicola; and Tsering Hannaford has created Meditation on Seeing (Portrait of Dad), depicting her 27-time Archibald finalist father Robert Hannaford.

Cheng Lei, the Chinese-born Australian news anchor who was detained in China for three years, was captured by Sydney artist Kirsty Neilson in Cheng-Lei – After China.

Academic and former political hostage Kylie Moore-Gilbert and her comedian partner Sami Shah have been painted by Melbourne artist Ben Howe.

Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist Thea Anamara Perkins, a 2020 Archibald finalist for her painting of her grandfather Charles Madden, is a finalist again with a diptych of her mother, curator Hetti Perkins.

Nick Stathopoulos has tenderly wrought The Last Picture Show – Portrait of David Stratton; and Good Food columnist Jill Dupleix appears in Jill’s at Bills’ by Zoe Young, honouring late chef Bill Granger.

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton has been painted by Lennox Head artist and 2020 people’s choice winner Angus McDonald – who is himself a subject this year, depicted by second-time finalist and refugee Mostafa Azimitabar.

Angus McDonald’s portrait of Marcia Langton, AO is also an Archibald finalist.

Other familiar finalist faces include former soccer player and activist Craig Foster, blue Wiggle Anthony Field, actor Jacob Elordi, and three members of the Heartbreak High cast – actors Chloe Hayden, Will McDonald and Josh Heuston.

The exhibition opens on June 8.

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