The Art Gallery of New South Wales has unveiled the winners of the 2025 Archibald, Wynne, and Sulman Prizes, celebrating a dynamic array of Australian artistic talent.

This year, the Archibald Prize was awarded to four-time finalist, Julie Fragar, for her other-worldly portrait of Brisbane artist, Justene Williams. The work is an oil on canvas, titled Flagship Mother, and was inspired not only by Williams' cross-material catalogue of work, but by the labour of getting by — specifically, holding down a day job, creating art, and being a mother.

With this win, Fragar becomes the 13th woman ever to win the $100,000 Archibald Prize, with Nora Heysen being the first in 1938. Even more significantly, 2025 marked the first year that there were more women than men represented among the 57 works shortlisted as finalists for the Archibald Prize; from 904 entires in total.

Accepting the prize, Fragar said, “To be the winner of the Archibald Prize is a point of validation. It means so much to have the respect of my colleagues at the Art Gallery. It doesn’t get better than that.”

She also said she chose to paint Williams “for three reasons: she’s a dear friend, as a great artist and to capture her other worldliness.”

Also announced today were the winners of the $50,000 Wynne Prize, which is awarded to a landscape painting of Australian scenery, or figure sculpture, and the $40,000 Sulman Prize, which goes to a subject painting, genre painting or a mural project.

This year, the Wynne Prize went to three-time Wynne finalist Jude Rae, for her oil on linen creation, Pre-dawn sky over the Port Botany container terminal.

"When I wake before dawn, as the sky is starting to show the first flush of deep blue, this is what I see from my bedroom windows in Redfern. Port Botany container terminal: logistics operating 24/7. Australia, trading nation: still doing what it must despite US tariffs; still in the business of transportation," Rae said of the work.

The work — much like the view it depicts — is laden with colonial history. Rae's sightline from the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern to the site of Captain Cook’s first landing in Australia, a place deemed terra nullius (no man’s land) by the British, was also a traditional corridor used by Aboriginal people to access the bay.

The Sulman Prize was awarded to Gene A'Hern, for his Sky Painting. Describing the piece, A'Hern said, "this painting unfolded as I immersed myself in skywatching, while reflecting on the ceremonial choreography of the surrounding environment."

You can view more information on this year's finalists, as well as the winners on the Art Gallery of New South Wales website.

All three exhibitions — Archibald, Wynne and Sulman — will be on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 10 May to 17 August 2025. The Archibald finalists will then tour regional New South Wales and Victoria, visiting Geelong, Gosford, Muswellbrook, Mudgee, Shoalhaven and Coffs Harbour through to mid-2026.