ARCHIBALD EXHIBITION - June 2026
On Wednesday the 24th June the Gardening Group, twenty three of us, ventured into the city for a morning tea in the Botanical Gardens and guided tour of the annual Archibald Exhibition.
This has become a very popular annual event for our group.
The guided tour of the Archibald this year was wonderful. Our tour leader Susan took us around most of the exhibits and shared such interesting background information. Added to this she also did a few highlights and winners of the Wynne (Landscape) and Sulman (Mixed Media) Exhibitions.
The Archibald is the annual highlight of the Art Gallery Exhibitions. It is the most prestigious prize for portraiture. This is the 105th anniversary of the prize and the criterion for entry is that it must be a portraiture of a well-known person distinguished in art, letters, science or politics. The subject must be painted from life and the artist and subject know each other. The artist must also be living in Australia, and the artwork also should have been completed in the past 12 months.
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Richard Lewer wins the Archibald 2026 prize with a portrait of ‘Iluwanti Ken’, a Pitjantjatjara Elder, senior artist and ngangkaṟi (traditional healer)
The winner this year did not really get a round of applause from Westleigh Probus. We all seemed to lean towards the more realistic paintings like Layne Beachley and Sam Mostyn.
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Mostafa (Moz) Azimitabar with his oil on linen, ‘Jim Moginie. Jim Moginie is a musician and founding member of the band Midnight Oil
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Our tour guide, Susan, explains the painting ‘Lesleigh ‘Alémais’’; Daniel Kim’s subject is Lesleigh Jermanus, the founder and creative director of Australian fashion label Alémais
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Desiree Crossing’s ‘An ordinary man’, depicting Dr Mohammed Mustafa (Dr Mo) who worked as a volunteer physician in Gaza on two medical missions in 2024 and 2025
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Entitled ‘Keep on Stingin’, Sindy Sinn’s subject is musician Adam Hyde, best known as one half of electronic duo Peking Duk
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Noah Regan painted Sydney artist ‘Christophe Domergue’, ‘A peeling to the gods’
Stephanie Galloway Brown’s portrait of Layne Beachley AO Layne is a seven-time world champion surfer
