2021 marks the one-hundred-year anniversary of Australia’s oldest and most-loved portrait award, The Archibald Prize. Often controversial, The Archibald Prize continues to enthral and amuse, inspire and bemuse audiences from around Australia and overseas. It is unequivocally the most coveted art award for contemporary Australian portrait artists.

Archie 100: A Century of The Archibald Prize brings together almost one hundred artworks selected from every decade of The Archibald Prize exhibition and unearths many of the fascinating stories behind them.

Grouped thematically, the exhibition reflects how artistic styles and approaches to portraiture have changed over time, and how our perceptions of ‘the face of our nation’ have changed and evolved over the past one hundred years.

Since 1921, the prize has attracted entries from both prominent and emerging artists in Australia and New Zealand, and featured people from all walks of life, from famous faces to local heroes.

Through the eyes of some of Australia’s most famous artists we come face-to-face with iconic figures from our past including John Brack’s 1969 portrait of Mrs Edna Everage, and Wes Walter’s 1983 portrait of Ian (Molly) Meldrum.

Walter’s portrait captured Molly in his characteristic mid-sentence ‘um’ moment while hosting the iconic music show Countdown. Wearing his trademark Stetson hat and boots Meldrum is framed against a mural of a desert landscape in his Egyptian-themed home in Richmond. During a 1983 Countdown episode filmed in his living room, Meldrum presented a segment seated in the same pose before the same mural.

When interviewed about the portrait, Meldrum quipped that the artist should have received another award for managing to get him to sit still and remain silent for long enough to complete the portrait. He went on to say that while he sat and posed Walters ‘did a lot of talking and he was really one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.’ Subsequently, English music legend Sir Elton John purchased the portrait and gifted it to his friend Meldrum who hung it in his lounge room.

Archie 100 is the result of many years of research and searching for lost portraits. It includes portraits from the Art Gallery of NSW’s Collection as well as works from libraries, galleries and museums across Australia and New Zealand, and from private Australian and international collections, a number of which have never been seen since being exhibited in The Archibald Prize.