Archibald Prize Archives - Sonia Kretschmar

It’s Archibald portrait time of year again – and for many years I have wanted to do a portrait of Kate Durham – Melbourne artist, jewellery maker and ‘activist’ of sorts. When I started out on my own “artistic journey” many years ago, Kate was one of the few Melbourne based female artists who, along with Mirka Mora, seemed larger than life / exotic to me. Over the years I’ve been in peripheral contact with her, and it has been interesting to see how she has been developing both in her artistic work and her interest in politics and helping refugees at this dark time in Australia’s history. Her work is eclectic, her jewellery gathers up objects which to me look like they have washed up on the bank of a river in Mesopotamia, so it made sense to me to depict her as a kind of human Bowerbird, on the surface collecting objects for display whilst drawing upon a rich range of history and tragedy beneath.

The Archibald Prize – that annual portrait competition held by the Art Gallery of NSW to such fanfare – usually calls for entries early in the year. Anticipating this, I started working on piece – a portrait of Melbourne based Theatre Group ‘Born in a Taxi’, way back in the distant days of January. I remember meeting up with them as they were doing rehearsals for an outdoor ‘roaming piano’ performance.

However , this year, to keep us on our toes, it was announced that entries would open in June – this week, in fact. So I had a few extra months to stew over things – how to achieve effects, like using metallics without looking too tacky, or how the curtains should fall. So this is the result – naturally I had waited until the last day to give it the final coat of varnish. I hope it captures a balance of theatricality, absurdity and intrigue (and it looks much better in “real life”, much like a theatre performance does!).

More details about ‘Born in a Taxi’ here.

Archibald Prize

Bowerbird – Portrait of Kate Durham

Archibald time again