The Announcement of Archibald Prize Winner for 2010

It’s 11.50 am on 26 March; the Archibald winner for 2010 will be announced in 10 minutes to the media. I am in the Packing Room with the Media Relations Team, Sam Leach and his wife.In 10 minutes the media frenzy following the announcement will begin. The Media Relations Team affectionately calls it ‘the circus’. Sam and his wife are humble and sincere, ready for what’s to come.

It was a pleasure to see for the remainder of the day, how Sam handled the media with grace and dignity. It’s an amazing fact to absorb; he has won both the Archibald and Wynne prizes. The Archibald for his portrait of Tim Minchin and the Wynne for the work titled Proposal for landscaped cosmos. Both works are the smallest entries in each of their categories. The portrait is 60x40cm and the Wynne entry is 25cm x25cm.

In 89 years of the Archibald prize’s history this is the second year that an artist has won both the Archibald and Wynne prizes in the same year, the first being William Dobell in 1948. Brett Whiteley won all three prizes Archibald, Wynne and Sulman in 1978.(Media Release Art Gallery of New South Wales, 26 March, 2010)

Sam Leach’s wife comments that her husband suddenly feels like a rock star for the day.One of Sam’s two daughters is turning two the next day. He is amused that this is the year he won the Archibald. The portrait took a long time to paint. It was hard to paint Tim after meeting him only a couple of times in person. He kept redoing it a few times, just wasn’t satisfied with it. Sam wanted to paint his subject in full length and not just his face, because in his performances Tim uses his whole body, not just his face.

The announcement is made at midday on 26 March by Steven Lowy.The room of 200 or more members of the press, again just corner the winner next to his portrait for interviews and photos from midday to 3.30pm, when Sam eventually has a break.

Also announced were: The Trustees’ Watercolour Prize awarded to Viola Dominello for her work titled The Hawkesbury. The Sulman Prize was awarded to Michael Lindeman, for his work titled Paintings, Prints & Wall hangings. Both Dominello and Lindeman have a Master of Fine Art from COFA.

Apart from COFA Dominello also studied in Italy, America and the Julian Ashton School of Art in Sydney. She has exhibited in over 55group exhibitions since 1989. Dominello had 11 solo exhibitions since 1993, including two solo exhibitions in Venice, Italy. Her work is represented in many collections, including Artbank and Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Italy.(Source: www.stelladownerfineart.com.au/artists-details.php?artistID=7)
Since 1998, Lindeman had numerous solo exhibitions in Sydney and has also been involved in curated group shows throughout Australia, Los Angeles and New York. (www.thearchibaldprize.com.au)

The Archibald judges appreciated the size of the winning work for this year’s Archibald prize-Tim Minchin’s portrait and the detail in it. It seems for next year’s Archibald the entries may be a lot smaller in size, than what was traditionally entered, especially given the media's criticism of large portraits entered into the Archibald this year.

Critical reviews of the exhibition of Archibald finalists’ works for this year, in the lead up to the announcement of the winner didn’t mention Tim Minchin’s portrait in a negative light, favouring its smaller size and attention to detail.

John McDonald’s article, published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 30 March this year made it clear from its title what he thought of this year’s Archibald finalists, Archibald Warning: Viewers May Need Therapy for Exposure to Bad Art (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/archibald-warning-viewers-may-need-therapy-for-exposure-to-bad-art-20100330-r99j.html)

The Editor's Note included in the article verified that the article was written before the announcement of this year’s Archibald winner. John McDonald helpfully shared with his readers, who he thinks the winner may be and the reasons for his choice. “This year's show is full of large and very boring pictures, with few of the ‘little gems’ that add variety to the mix. This could mean that a small work is unlikely to win or it may be that a small winner is long overdue.”

He continued,“Following this tortuous logic, the most likely candidate might be Sam Leach, whose small portrait of the comedian Tim Minchin is one of the few paintings that asks the viewer to pause for more than a second. Leach is sufficiently young and groovy and his painstaking photorealism requires more hours at the easel than the large-scale works of many co-exhibitors. Minchin's stiff, zombie-like stance is more eye-catching than the relaxed poses around him.”

Christopher Allen in his article titled Heads will Roll in the printed version of the Australian newspaper, on March 18 described the problem of, “...the big head: a variety of portrait that has evolved specifically in the context of the Archibald Prize. No one wants to hang a 2m face on their wall, but painters are afraid they won’t be noticed in the visual cacophony without the benefit of scale.”
(Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/heads-will-roll-at-archibald-prize/story-e6frg8n6-1225842055813)

Later in the article he said, “The essential work of the painter is not to give a literal account of visual appearance but to translate the visual world into another order: and artificial world of forms and colours, that takes on its own parallel reality. It is the distance between this parallel reality and what we think of as the real world-it cannot be too close or too far-that makes a picture enlightening, imagination- provoking or beautiful…Very few pictures here are really pictures at all, in the sense of having been really thought out in that medium, rather than simply copied from photographs.”

However, every artist has the sitter’s signature on their entry form, as proof that they did in fact have at least one sitting with their subject. Sam Leach purposely made sure to address this possible criticism and spent a couple of afternoons with Tim Minchin to get a feel for what his subject is like.
Tim Minchin’s portrait is pictured in Christopher Allen’s article, referred to above, but it isn’t mentioned in the article. This could be interpreted as a form of silent approval.