Search / david roberts

Impressions

Impressions: Painting light and life presents portraits by, and of, artists at the heart of Australian impressionism including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin.

David M Thomas

Since 1993 Brisbane-based artist David M Thomas has investigated self identity through art works that encompass painting, text, audio, video and performance.

Dempsey's people

Dempsey’s people: a folio of British street portraits 1824–1844 is the first exhibition to showcase the compelling watercolour images of English street people made by the itinerant English painter John Dempsey throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.

Inner Worlds

Portraits of Australia’s pioneering psychologists and artworks by artists fascinated by the subconscious mind.

Dissections

This display sets two impressive portraits from the collection into direct dialogue: Sam Jinks’ sculptural self portrait and Nick Mourtzakis’ painted portrait of David Chalmers, along with related maquette and sketches.Together they explore physical and psychological manifestations of the strata of self-hood.

From Face to Face

Through David Moore's camera we meet many of the outstanding figures of the twentieth century - in diverse areas of achievement - as well as anonymous faces which speak directly to us in these photographs.

Darling Portrait Prize 2020

The Darling Prize is a new biennial prize for Australian portrait painters, painting Australian sitters. The winner receives a cash prize of $75,000.

Before hand

Revealing the backstories behind the NPG collection, Before hand features interviews with artists and sitters as well as working drawings, scrapbooks, sketches and footage taken in artists’ studios and out on location.

Best of British

For the first hundred years or so of its existence, The National Portrait Gallery in London had no contemporary collection at all

The Cosmopolitans

Spanning the 1880s to the 1930s, this collection display celebrates the innovations in art – and life – introduced by the generation of Australians who travelled to London and Paris for experience and inspiration in the decades either side of 1900.

Presence and Absence

This exhibition focuses on exploring national and communal identity through sculptural production in Australia, from the early decades of settlement through to the present day

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.

Sporting Archibald

Bare

Bare: Degrees of undress celebrates the candid, contrived, natural, sexy, ironic, beautiful, and fascinating in Australian portraiture that shows a bit of skin. 

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2016

The National Photographic Portrait Prize 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.

Heads of the People

For Tom Roberts - Australia's best nineteenth-century portrait painter - neither a proto-national portrait gallery nor more popular collections of portrait heads, were sufficient public celebrations for the notables of Australian history