Adding an owl to this painting was a wise move, it just won a $75,000 prize
By Nick Galvin
Noel McKenna’s painting William Nuttall with horses in field was ignored by the judges in last year’s Archibald Prize.
Fast-forward 12 months and the same work has scooped the $75,000 Darling Portrait Prize for the veteran Sydney artist. Actually, it’s not quite the same work. McKenna made a small revision in the interim, adding a tiny owl perched on a fence to the original scene.
Noel McKenna’s William Nuttall with horses in field, winner of the Darling Portrait Prize 2024.Credit:
“I added the owl to it before I put it into the Darling Prize and I suppose it brought me good luck,� says McKenna. “I kind of identify with the owl as an animal. I don’t really know why. I suppose in some ways I like owls in that you very rarely see them. They lurk in the background a bit and I am a little bit like that myself. I’m quite an introverted person, so the owl is me, really.�
The winning portrait is instantly recognisable as the work of McKenna, who won the 1994 Sulman Prize and has been a regular finalist in all the major prizes in his long career. The subject is his long-time agent and friend William Nuttall, depicted in a field with some of his horses.
“I was staying with him one weekend, and he just drove me to a paddock,� says McKenna. “I took some photos of him with the horses in the paddock and I liked the composition that came out. So that’s how the painting evolved.
“I liked it as a painting but one’s own view of work doesn’t always correspond with that of the judges, of course. So it’s always sort of a nice serendipity when they like what you like.�
Noel McKenna with his award-winning portrait.Credit: Mark Mohell
Horses and dogs feature regularly in McKenna’s spare, angular paintings reflecting his passion for animals.
“I kind of believe animals have a complexity about them more so than a lot of people give them credit for,� he says. “I feel they actually have a soul. I just feel very, very sensitive to them, I suppose.�
Meanwhile, the National Photographic Portrait Prize winner is South Australian artist Amos Gebhardt for their portrait of Indigenous author Alexis Wright – a Waanyi woman, who won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and the Stella Prize in 2018 and 2024.
Alexis with moon is a diptych showing a ghostly image of Wright looking towards the night sky.
“It is a part of a bigger series where I’ve been photographing people who I respect as visionaries and who address systems of power and liberation in their life and work in different ways,� says Gebhardt, who will receive $30,000 plus $20,000 in camera gear.
Amos Gebhardt with their winning work, Alexis with moon.Credit: Mark Mohell
“I’m interested in these figures because they’re often unacknowledged within the dominant narrative of the heroic.�
Gebhardt originally intended to make the portrait with a digital camera, but found the rendering of the moonlight was “too sterile� and switched to old-school medium format film.
“It was hard to work with,� they said, “but I loved working with it and it forced me to really slow down and to be very intentional and meticulous in how I worked with Alexis.�
The winning works and all the finalists are on show at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, until October 13