Eyes on the prize – a portrait of Brisbane

It’s that time of the year. Time for joy, sadness, frustration, anger … it’s time to announce the finalists at this year’s Brisbane Portrait Prize.

Finalists for 2024 have been revealed with 64 works selected from more than 575 entries in this year’s competition. We’ve already heard from a number of people who are outraged that they weren’t chosen. But any artists who didn’t make the cut should console themselves with the fact that they are in pretty good company. And there is always the Salon des Refuses at the Royal Queensland Art Society’s Petrie Terrace Gallery for a second chance.

You will have to wait a couple of weeks to see all the works in the flesh but you can check out the finalists online now.

There’s quite a range of subjects this year including rugby league icon Wally Lewis, funnyman and media personality Jamie Dunn, Queensland Ballet’s new artistic director Leanne Benjamin and many others. There’s a lovely portrait of the Brisbane writer Susan Johnson by Christine Wrest-Smith and a very impressive portrait of philanthropist Tim Fairfax by Christopher McVinish.

Good to see some of our favourite artists as finalists this year. Stephen Nothling is in the mix, so is Stephen Tiernan, Elizabeth Barden, Robert Mercer, Pat Hoffie, David Paulson and other names we know. But there are new names you won’t know and as well as celebrities and plenty of ordinary punters.

And that’s how it rolls every year.

Now in its sixth year, the competition’s finalists will be vying across nine categories for a combined total of $90,000 in prize money, including the highly coveted $50,000 Lord Mayor’s Prize.

Brisbane Portrait Prize chair Anna Reynolds says she is thrilled with the quality of work this year.

“We have seen some wonderful works entered,” Reynolds says. “I’m constantly amazed at the artistic talent we have here in Brisbane. The judges had a very tough task.”

The finalists’ judges were Francoise Lane, artistic director of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair and Christine Clark, head of curatorial collections at Museum of Brisbane. The main judge is Bree Pickering, director of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, who will now have the final say.

Reynolds points out that the Finalists Exhibition will be held this year at the State Library of Queensland where “the works will look sensational”.

“What we will see in the entries is a snapshot of contemporary concerns,” Reynolds says.

“This year, themes include navigating life as a father or a mother, the fragility of life, the nature of memory and the impact of screens on young people. More broadly this year, we see artists look to the past and the future. Some reference the greats of Renaissance art, while others critique how AI impacts the creative realm. Some depict it a threat and others employ it as a tool which extends the creative conversation.”

State Librarian and CEO Vicki McDonald congratulated the portrait prize finalists for showcasing the extraordinary diversity of the human spirit.

“Portraiture is a special form of storytelling and as a global cultural institution State Library of Queensland honours its value through our collections and partnership with the Brisbane Portrait Prize,” she says. “It speaks to who we are and how we see ourselves as Queenslanders and we look forward to audiences connecting with the lives captured in each portrait at State Library.”

The Finalists Exhibition is free and opens to the public at State Library Queensland on August 3, running until November 10, with the public able to choose their People’s Choice winner by the end of October.

The Salon des Refuses exhibition is another opportunity for artists who enter the Brisbane Portrait Prize. The exhibition at the Petrie Terrace Gallery features works selected by Salon judges from the works not selected as finalists. It is on at Petrie Terrace Gallery from August 8 to September 1.

brisbaneportraitprize.org