To mark the 2024 Paris Olympics, we are showcasing collection works that celebrate some of the exceptional athletes who have represented Australia at the Games over its long history. Reflecting Australia's obsession with sport, the collection features many portraits of high-achieving, high-profile sportspeople made in a spirit of celebration, adoration or commemoration.
Narratives of national character and identity are often embroiled with sporting prowess, and in making portraits of athletes artists frequently lean into iconography that foregrounds the qualities we assume are exemplified by our sporting heroes: limitless endurance, supreme fitness, fairness, courage, humility and unshakeable self-discipline. Others gently point to the ordinariness and frailty present even in seemingly superhuman people. All recognise the breadth of achievement of Australian athletes on the world stage.
