Year 10 Galleries
The Archibald Prize Exhibition
Influence and Significance
The Archibald Prize, held annually at the Art Gallery of NSW continues to be the most popular and controversial exhibition within Australia. In the spirit of the Prize, our students are creating a large portrait using oil paint of an influential or significant person in their lives.
The students must fulfil all of the governing rules and regulations of the exhibition, in particular, that the portraits must be 'painted from life'. This rule alone caused so many of the historical controversies that brought so much notoriety to the exhibition.
In 1943, William Dobell painted a portrait of his artist friend Joshual Smith in such an exaggerated style that the courts were asked to decide if the work was a portrait or mealy a caricature.
In 1975, John Bloomfield (now the Director of Painting at the National Art School) painted the filmmaker Tim Burstall. After one week of being awarded the prize, Bloomfield was stripped of his prize when he revealed that he had painted the work from a photograph and had only seen Burstall once and only from a distance.
Our students have all at this stage met, photographed and sketched their chosen subjects. A remarkable array of people have been chosen by the students from, church ministers, friendly neighbours, inspirational music teachers, to a popular energetic teacher from St Andrew's.
We were all treated to a diverse array of portraits of teachers, dear friends, kindly neighbours, to musicians, music teachers, youth ministers, and even one from an on-line chat-room!
It was wonderful to read the students own artists statements about the significance and importance of the people they had painted. Many of the students wrote light, humorous and uplifting accounts and others were deeply moving and poignant.
How passionately our Year 10 students are engaged in life and with those who share their lives.
