Archibald four-time finalist Julie Fragar broke down in tears when Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) Director Maud Page called her this morning to say Fragar was the winner of the $100,000 Archibald Prize 2025.
Her winning work, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene) depicts fellow Brisbane artist and colleague, Justene Williams, as a playful master of the universe.
“You work your whole career imagining this might happen one day,” says Fragar. “Thinking back to myself as a 17-year-old showing up at the Sydney College of the Arts – a kid from country New South Wales – it’s incredible to think I have won the Archibald Prize. Portrait painting wasn’t taken as seriously in the 1990s as it is today. I have always regarded the Archibald Prize as a place that understood the value of portraiture.”
She continues, “To be the winner of the Archibald Prize is a point of validation. It means so much to have the respect of my colleagues at the Art Gallery. It doesn’t get better than that.”
Fragar’s winning portrait was selected from 57 works by other finalists, which include artworks by Abdul Abdullah (winner of the Packing Room Prize 2025), Yvette Coppersmith, Robert Fielding, Richard Lewer, Sid Pattni, Joan Ross and Marcus Wills.
Read: 2025 Archibald finalists announced: conversation with curator Beatrice Gralton
Fragar works with her sitter, Williams, at the Queensland College of Art and Design. She says, “Justene is incredible. I feel very fortunate that she allowed me to do this portrait. There is nobody like her. The work is a reflection on the experience of making art to deadlines, and the labour and love of being a mother.“
The words ‘Flagship Mother’ in the portrait’s title come from Willliams’ recent endurance performance in Aotearoa New Zealand entitled Making do rhymes with poo, which was about the labour of ‘getting by’.
Page says Fragar “has a sumptuous ability to transcend reality and depict her subjects technically but also psychologically”. She has depicted Williams as “a larger-than-life character, a performer – cacophonous and joyous … surrounded by her own artworks and, most important of all, her daughter Honore as a tiny figure atop a sculpture. It speaks to me as a powerful rendition of the juggle some of us perform as mothers and professionals.”
Wynne and Sulman Prize winners also announced
Sydney artist Jude Rae took home the $50,000 Wynne Prize with a landscape painting, Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal. Rae is a three-time Wynne finalist but says the win was unexpected: “I grew up with the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, with my dad entering. I’m honoured and very pleased.”
The sightline depicted in Rae’s painting from Redfern to the site of Captain Cook’s first landing in Australia was also a traditional corridor used by Aboriginal people to access the bay, and is laden with history.
She adds, “There is no way to photography it – it’s too subtle and too fleeting. It’s a big sky and we’re all really little.”
The $40,000 Sulman Prize 2025 went to Gene A’Hern for Sky painting, a gestural piece that draws on the artist’s relationship to the Blue Mountains, where he lives and works.
A’Hern says, “…this painting unfolded as I immersed myself in skywatching, while reflecting on the ceremonial choreography of the surrounding environment.”
All finalists in Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2025 will be exhibited at AGNSW from 10 May to 17 August 2025.
