Richard Lewer Wins 2026 Archibald Prize
11May 9, 2026
TheArt Gallery of New South Wales(AGNSW) on May 8 namedRichard Lewerthe winner of the 2026Archibald Prize. The award, considered Australia’s top portrait honor, is presented annually in recognition of the best portrait of an individual “distinguished in art, letters, science or politics” painted by an Australian resident. The New Zealand–born Lewer, a six-time Archibald finalist who lives and works in Melbourne, won the AU$100,000 prize (US$72,000) for his synthetic-polymer-paint-on-canvasportrait of Pitjantjatjara elder, senior artist, andngangkari(traditional healer) Iluwanti Ken.
Titled after his subject, Lewer’s life-size work shows a gray-haired Aboriginal woman clad in a striped T-shirt, a jungle-patterned skirt, and slippers against a vibrant golden-yellow background. The prize jury, made up of AGNSW trustees, chose the work unanimously from a among fifty-nine finalists culled from 1,034 entries.
“In person, Iluwanti is a small woman but she carries immense, quiet authority,” said Lewer in a statement. “I painted her life‑size, so her presence meets the viewer directly. The yellow ochre background holds the intensity of the heat and light we were working in. She loves bright clothing, which feels inseparable from her spirit, and the traces of paint on her arm acknowledge her as a working artist, as if she has just stepped out of the studio.”
“What can be said?” sked AGSNW director Maud Page, speaking at the presentation ceremony, held at the gallery on Friday night. “You see the picture. You see the strength of it, you see the poise. You see all of the things that we know makes Australia unique in the world.”
Lewer wasn’t the only prizewinner anointed at the ceremony. Gaypalani Waṉambi won the AU$50,000 Wynne Prize, given annually for a landscape painting or figurative sculpture depicting Australian scenery, for The Waṉambi tree, an abstract spray-paint-on-steel work. Lucy Culliton won the AU$40,000 Sulman Prize—presented for the best genre painting, subject painting, or mural—for Toolah, artist model, an oil-on-canvas painting of one of her seven greyhounds.
The winner of AGNSW’s AU$3,000 Packing Room Prize, chosen by museum staff who receive, unpack, and hang the Archibald Prize entries, was announced on April 30, with self-taught painter Sean Layh being proclaimed an “instant standout” for his oil-on-board portrait of actor Jacob Collins.
The winners’ works will be on view alongside those of the finalists for the Archibiald, Wynne, and Sulman prizes, at the AGNSW from May 9 through August 16.