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Festival opening night dinner with Paul West

Join the host of River Cottage Australia for a special meal and conversation

National Portrait Gallery Director announced

The National Portrait Gallery welcomes Angus Trumble

Ben McNamara

This is Marissa Gallagher from Kintore, which if you're in Alice Springs, just go west until the WA border, just before that, a traditional area of Pintupi mob.

The choices of a modern woman

When opposites attract

Stepping out

Beautiful punk love

Margaret Seares, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by the Sid and Fiona Myer Family Foundation 2018

The Legend of Ruby and Archie

A bond in song

A photographer’s glamorous friends

Community, arts, activism

Icons Syndicate

Oz Indie

It was the era of recording your favourite songs directly from the radio; of seeing the latest acts and clips on Countdown; and when the Aussie bands you saw on TV and heard in the charts were the ones you could see live at the pub.

2014-15 Acquisition Fund

Kristin Headlam's portrait of Chris Wallace-Crabbe was acquired with the support of the Circle of Friends in 2014.

Architecture

Natural light and human proportions – the design by Johnson Pilton Walker

Richard Walley OAM honoured in new Portrait Gallery commission

A new commissioned portrait funded by the Gallery’s Foundation will be launched at Murdoch University in Perth tonight, Wednesday 2 September.

Pushpamala N

Pushpamala N. was born in 1956 in Bangalore. Her early training was in sculpture, but as her practice progressed she brought an early enthusiasm for narrative figuration into her photographic work.

David Cossini

Godfrey's amazing man. I've known him for four years now. He has a very tough story.

Allow me to introduce...

These full-length figures in watercolour, gouache and pencil date mostly from the 1820s, and almost all come from the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart.

About the exhibition

Portraits from the Sigg collection, from 1979 to the present including painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation.

Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture

Exhibited simultaneously at the two locations, Go Figure! is drawn from the Sigg Collection, the largest and most significant collection of contemporary Chinese art anywhere in the world.

Zhang Xiaogang

Born 1958, Kunming, Yunnan Province. Lives and works in Beijing.

2020 Annual Appeal

In 2020 the Annual Appeal was focussed on Sally Robinson's remarkable portrait of author Tim Winton.

Agus Suwage

Born in 1959, Agus Suwage was educated in the creative hub of Central Java, Yogyakarta before moving west to study graphic design at the Bandung Institute of Technology.

Davida Allen

Going around a gallery with a child, we point to a painting of a dog and brightly ask ‘What’s that?’ If they don’t say ‘A dog’, we tell them that’s what it is. We don’t say it’s a shape inscribed by an artist that’s popularly understood to signify a dog. That’d only serve to foster a smarty-pants.

Nicholas Paspaley Jnr, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Ross Adler AC 2018

2023 Annual Appeal

In 2023 the Annual Appeal was focussed on a work by one of Australia's best loved and most successful portrait painters, Judy Cassab AO CBE, depicting model, entrepreneur and deportment icon, June Dally-Watkins OAM.

Swimming every day

Dr Christopher Chapman, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2015 Prize.

Foundation Members

Chairman Sid Myer AM, Hayley Baillie, Tim Bednall, Jillian Broadbent AC, Patrick Corrigan AM, Marilyn Darling AC, Tim Fairfax AC, Sam Meers AO, John Liangis, Dr Helen Nugent AC and Nigel Satterley AM.

History

How the National Portrait Gallery and its unique collection came to be

Herra Pahlasari

At the time of Herra Pahlasari’s birth in 1978, her academic parents were living in Canberra.

Nusra Latif Qureshi

Nusra Latif Qureshi was born in Pakistan in 1973 and originally trained in the traditional art of Mughal miniature (musaviri) paintings.

Nikhil Chopra

Nikhil Chopra was born in 1974, in Calcutta. His first degree was in commerce, but in 1997 he took up fine art studies, eventually gaining a Masters in Fine Art from Ohio State University, United States.

Fiona McMonagle

Fiona aims to create a dangerous situation with a flood of water on the paper, forcing each work to the point where it can fail, and then rescuing it. 

Anna Culliton

Anna Culliton never had a colouring-in book when she was little. Her parents –Tony, a filmmaker, and Stephanie, a painter – wouldn’t let her have one. Instead, they insisted on her drawing her own pictures to colour-in. 

Everybody, look serious

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2014 Prize.

The more things change...

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2017 Prize.

Uncommon Australians

Sarah Engledow writes about Gordon and Marilyn Darling and their support for the National Portrait Gallery throughout its evolution.

Inner Worlds and psychoanalysis

Inner Worlds evokes a broad view of psychology as a discipline. However, the specific interests of the practitioners whose portraits are included in the exhibition incorporate specialist areas including psychoanalysis.

Rick Amor: 21 Portraits

Sarah Engledow chronicles Rick Amor's work and accomplishments in this extensive essay in conjunction with the exhibition Rick Amor: 21 Portraits.

Some prime ministers

Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

Sarah Engledow looks at three decades of Nicholas Harding's portraiture.