A guide to the Archibald Prize, for the people who don't speak art

The Age

14-05-2025

The ultimate selfies
Why bother with celebrities when you can get results like these from self-portraits? Yvette Coppersmith's Self-portrait with two cats is mesmerising in its serenity, the artist's heavy-lidded visage matching her snoozing cats alongside her. She looks quite glamorous too, like Cleopatra-via-Old Hollywood, evoking advertisements from the art deco era. Even from afar it stands out in the room, a result of Coppersmith (the Archibald's 2018 winner) mixing her oils with sand to lend the picture an interesting, fleshy texture.
On the opposite end of the same wall hangs Tsering Hannaford's Meditation on time (a left-handed self-portrait), painted several months after the artist – an 11-time Archibald finalist – suffered a tendon injury in her right wrist, her dominant hand. There's something stoic and determined in her still gaze, emanating from a heavy swirl of darkness, that's hard to look away from.
From the always enjoyable Studio A collective in Sydney, first-time finalist Mathew Calandra's His face like my face – self-portrait as Robert Englund playing Freddy Krueger is sure to be a crowd-pleaser. The subject might be playful but the portrait is deceptively intricate, all obsessive ink work awash in a swathe of blood-red watercolour. Fun and creepy, like my soul.
The short kings and tiny queens
Little portraits have a rough time at the Archibald, maybe in galleries in general where bigger is always considered better, grander, more striking. But look at Natasha Bienek's portrait of artist Cressida Campbell and tell me that's not some painstaking ambition. At 15 x 20 centimetres, it's barely larger than a postcard but filled with photorealist detail so intricate, you could stare at it for hours. Sombre and reverent, Bienek paints Campbell in front of her garden and a tiny print from 18th-century Japanese artist Utamaro that I urgently need for my Sylvanian Families collection.
Another small wonder is Callum Worsfold's impressionistic Self-portrait in the studio, where he puts the process on display, depicting himself in a paint-splattered jumpsuit and a gas mask, surrounded by the chemically hazardous tools of his trade. Grimier than a Roc Marciano cut, it'd be suffocating if it was any larger than its merciful 23 x 13 centimetres.
The bonkers crowd favourite?
Marcus Wills' Cormac in Arcadia stretches the definition of portrait in a way that would probably annoy his fellow finalists, which is exactly why I'm here for it. It's supposedly a portrait of 13-year-old actor Cormac Wright, but it's actually a dramatic tableau done Rembrandt-style, filled with about two dozen mysterious figures, a frontally naked Jesus figure at dead centre, and even someone in adidas stripes. Wright, meanwhile, stands left of centre in a green Uniqlo hoodie, facing in the complete wrong direction, barely an onlooker in his own nightmare of a portrait.
It's unsettling and addictive and a crowd-pleaser judging by the number of people who hovered in front of it all evening. That the Archibald judges deemed this a finalist is perhaps a promising sign of bonkers things to come.