Julie Fragar wins 2025 Archibald Prize for her painting of Justene Williams

Julie Fragar has won the $100,000 Archibald Prize, the country’s most coveted – often controversial – portraiture award, with her painting of friend and fellow artist Justene Williams.

Julie Fragar and fellow artist Justene Williams, with Fragar’s winning portrait of Williams. Picture: Britta Campion

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Brisbane artist Julie Fragar burst into tears when she was told she had won the $100,000 Archibald Prize, the country’s most coveted – often controversial – portraiture award, for her painting of friend and fellow artist Justene Williams.

“Visual arts careers have many ups and downs,’’ said Fragar, who is head of painting at Queensland’s College of Art and Design. The four-time Archibald finalist, who grew up in country NSW, added: “It’s incredible to think I have won the Archibald Prize.’’

Fragar’s winning painting, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), depicts an airborne Williams floating above her art implements and sought to capture her close friend’s “singularity and almost otherworldliness”. It also referenced the idea of women artists getting by – performing day jobs, meeting art deadlines and often, caring for children.

When asked what it was like to be the sitter for the Archibald Prize winner, Williams said: “Good, I suppose … She’s my friend, but also my boss in a way.’’ (Williams works at the same college as Fragar.)

Winner of the 2025 Archibald Prize: Julie Fragar’s Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), oil on canvas, 240 x 180.4cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jenni Carter. Sitter: Justene Williams

AGNSW president of board trustees Michael Rose said the Archibald decision was unanimous and made at 7.20am on Friday morning. He said Fragar’s work is “a highly accomplished formal painting that is also incredibly contemporary … We were captivated by its energy.”

AGNSW director Maud Page said Fragar’s work “speaks to me as a powerful rendition of the juggle some of us perform as mothers and professionals’’.

Fragar’s painting was chosen from a field of 57 short-listed paintings that included portraits of celebrities Hugo Weaving, Jackie O and Nicole and Antonia Kidman, defamation lawyer Sue Chrysanthou and 2025 Australian of the Year Neale Daniher, who is battling motor neurone disease.

The 104-year-old Archibald Prize is awarded annually to the best portrait, “preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in arts, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia’’.

This year, almost 60 per cent of the finalist paintings, whittled down from 904 entries, were portraits of artists by other artists (22 entries) or self-portraits (12).

Paintings of high-profile visual artists Ken Done and Cressida Campbell made the finalists’ cut, alongside a multi-panel self-portrait by Aboriginal artist Vincent Namatjira overlaid with a dingo. Namatjira made history in 2020 as the first Indigenous artist to win the Archibald for his portrait of former AFL star Adam Goodes. He was also a finalist this year for the Wynne landscape and sculpture prize, which was announced on Friday at the AGNSW.

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The media have for years been addicted to the cliche that the Archibald Prize is ‘controversial’, but would never dare question the inclusion of any of the truly incompetent pictures – they are generally made by minorities who are today exempt from criticism.

That $50,000 prize went to Sydney artist Jude Rae for her work Pre-Dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal, while the $40,000 Sulman genre and mural award was won by Blue Mountains artist Gene A’Hern for his work, Sky Painting.

There were 139 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman finalists this year and just over half (72) were women, while 67 were men. A record 22 Indigenous painters were among the 52 finalists vying for the Wynne Prize.

Last week, pro-Palestinian activist and artist Abdul Abdullah won the 2025 Packing Room Prize, a precursor to the Archibald Prize, for his portrait of his close friend and fellow artist Jason Phu on horseback.

Abdullah and Phu were both finalists for the Archibald Prize this year.

Short-listed for his abstract painting of Weaving, Phu has called for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale to be permanently boycotted because of the recent, contentious dumping of Lebanese-Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi from the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Abdullah, a seven-time Archibald finalist, has also backed Sabsabi on social media, reposting a funding appeal to send him and his curator, Michael Dagostino, to Venice as independent artists.

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prize finalists go on display at the AGNSW from Saturday May 10, before touring to other venues.