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Paul Kelly and The Portraits

Aspects of singer songwriter Paul Kelly’s performance persona are communicated by portraits selected from a range of artists and leading music photographers in this focus exhibition.

Ralph Heimans

The exhibition will feature some of the most significant portraits in the artist’s career to date, from early major works such as his painting of HM Queen Mary of Denmark through to his most recent.

Ryan Presley: Paradise won

Marri Ngarr artist Ryan Presley's site-specific commission Paradise won is prominently positioned at the Gallery’s entrance. This ambitious new work invites conversations about the ongoing legacies of colonisation and celebrates First Nations survival and autonomy.

Shakespeare to Winehouse

From Shakespeare to Winehouse, Darwin to Dickens, the Beatles, Brontë sisters and Beckham, the National Portrait Gallery London holds the world’s most extensive collection of portraits.

Elvis At 21

Elvis at 21 is a photographic exhibition capturing Elvis’ rise to fame in the year 1956, before security and money built walls between him and his fans.

George Foxhill

Foxhill's portraits are more concerned with describing an emotional and psychological state than the surface topography of the human face.

Pub Rock

Celebrate the people, places and sounds of Australian pub rock and its enduring impact on our nation’s identity.

Sporting Archibald

Animated

Animated is the National Portrait Gallery's first online exhibition.

Kylie

Kylie Minogue, one of Australia's most famous cultural exports is now the subject of her own exhibition.

Awesome Achievers

Celebrate and be inspired by talent, passion and achievement – and triumph over adversity. This exhibition features major portraits drawn from the National Portrait Gallery collection and supplemented with works from private and institutional sources.

OBEY

Shepard Fairey is best known for his iconic poster Obama/Hope which he made in support of Barack Obama for the 2008 US election.

Of Kings and men

This display celebrates 100 years of the Historic Memorials Collection and its role in commissioning portraits of parliamentary and judicial figures in Australia.

Hall of Mirrors

Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka Portraits 1987-2007 explores the thread of portraiture through the artist's prolific career, now spanning more than 20 years.

National Youth Self Portrait Prize

At the end of 2007 the National Portrait Gallery launched the inaugural National Youth Self Portrait Prize and artists aged between eighteen and twenty-five were invited to submit self portraits using a variety of media including drawing, painting, printmaking and traditional or digital photography.

Proof

Portraits from The Movement is the first comprehensive survey of photographs from the Juno Gemes archive, which has supported the Aboriginal struggle for justice in Australia from 1978 to the present day.

Rick Amor

Rick Amor, noblest yet most unaffected of contemporary Australian portraitists, is also a painter of enigmatic, ominous landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes that haunt the viewer like dreams, dimly-recalled.

National Youth Self Portrait Prize

An annual event, the National Youth Self Portrait Prize seeks to encourage young people to embrace self portraiture and its expressive possibilities.

My Favourite Australian

My Favourite Australian is a project developed in collaboration with ABC TV and the people of Australia.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2020

The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.

Portrait Paintings by Matthew Perceval

From 1967 until 1981 Matthew Perceval lived and painted in France and during those years produced a large body of portrait paintings.

Judy Cassab

The artist's diary profiles six decades of Cassab's work, from the early portrait commissions of the 1950s to later paintings that have helped confirm her eminent place in the canon of Australian portraiture.

Vanity Fair Portraits

Vanity Fair Portraits traces the birth and evolution of photographic portraiture through the archives of Vanity Fair magazine.

Thousand Mile Stare

Thousand mile stare provides a unique portrait of people of rural Australia

Mirror With A Memory

This is the first major exhibition to examine photographic portraiture in Australia, from its beginnings in the early 1840s to the present day

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023

The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.

Clifton Pugh

This exhibition offers a comprehensive display of Clifton Pugh's portraits revealing his development and growth from tonal paintings to a unique style that was in demand from politicians, artists, academics and Australian personalities.

Australian of the Year

The Australian of the Year Awards have often provoked controversy about who is selected and whether their achievements are remarkable.

Max Dupain

During his long and distinguished career Max Dupain took thousands of photographs of people

Primed

Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2018

The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022

The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.

Time and light

This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.

To Look Within

This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits in Australia, from the colonial period to the present

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2009

In its second year at the National Portrait Gallery, and for the first time touring to other venues, the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2009 continues to present surprising perspectives on the nature of contemporary portrait photography.

Husbands and Wives

'I have just been to my dressing case to take a peep at you.

Icons

When a portrait communicates determination and individuality as boldly as these do, it has the potential to become an iconic image. For the Gallery’s 20th birthday this display brings together a group contemporary photographic portraits of inspiring women and men.

Glossy 2

Following the success of Glossy: Faces, Magazines, Now in 1999 the National Portrait Gallery again highlights the huge array of contemporary portraiture in the pages of magazines.

Nicholas Harding

Nicholas Harding: 28 portraits features paintings of Robert Drewe, John Bell and Hugo Weaving alongside gorgeously coloured recent oil portraits, delicate gouaches and bold ink and charcoal drawings.

Australian Visit

The exhibition will include works of art from the NPG Canberra's permanent collection with some inward loans and aims to highlight the achievements of notable Australians.

First Ladies

First Ladies profiles women who have achieved noteworthy firsts over the past 100 years.

Making Portraits

The considered matching of artist to subject has produced an amazing collection of unique and original works in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery

Sideshow Alley

Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.

Uncommon Australians

This exhibition showcases portraits acquired through the generosity of the National Portrait Gallery’s Founding Patrons, L Gordon Darling AC CMG and Marilyn Darling AC.