'It doesn’t get better than that': The 2025 winners of the Archibald Wynne and Sulman Prize

Julie Fragar, Jude Rae and Gene A’Hern are the Archibald Wynne and Sulman Prize 2025 winners, as announced at the Art Gallery of NSW earlier today.

The day has finally come for Julie Fragar, a four-time Archibald finalist, who has been announced as the winner of the 2025 Archibald Prize. Her oil painting Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene) has been hand-picked by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales from more than 2,390 entries.

Fragar broke into tears when Art Gallery of NSW director Maud Page phoned this morning to deliver the news that her work had been selected as the winner from 57 finalist works.

The winners of the Wynne and Sulman Prizes have also been revealed this morning. Read on to find out more about the winning artworks and their creators.

Archibald Prize 2025 Winner

Julie Fragar chose Brisbane-based artist Justene Williams as her sitter. ‘There is nobody like Justene. She thinks big and makes bigger, deploying everything from car bodies to opera singers to make work as fearless and feeling as she is,’ says Julie.

Flagship Mother in the title comes from Justene’s recent endurance performance in New Zealand that was about the labour of getting by. For Justene, like many women artists, that means the labour of a day job (Justene and Julie work together at an art school), of making art to deadlines and the labour—and love—of being a mother.

‘In the lower left of the painting you can see Justene’s daughter Honore looking up at her mum half in awe and half asking if this is what she will have to manage too,’ says Julie. The winning artwork depicts the ‘multiverse of characters and events’ that feature in Justene’s own studio back catalogue.

Julie Fragar’s Archibald Prize 2025 winning painting, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene) © the artist/Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jenni Carter

Speaking of her win, Julie shared: ‘You work your whole career imagining this might happen one day. Thinking back to myself as a 17 year old showing up at the Sydney College of the Arts—a kid from country New South Wales—it’s incredible to think I have won the Archibald Prize. Portrait painting wasn’t taken as seriously in the 1990s as it is today. I have always regarded the Archibald Prize as a place that understood the value of portraiture.’

‘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.’

Wynne Prize 2025 Winner

Jude Rae has been a Wynne Prize finalist three times previously, and her portrayal of Sydney’s Botany Bay (or Kamay) has elevated her to winner status. Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal is an atmospheric oil on linen, painted from the perspective of looking towards Botany Bay from her home in Redfern.

Botany Bay is laden with history, marking the site of Captain Cook’s first landing in Australia. Deemed terra nullius (no man’s land) by the British, it was also a traditional corridor used by Aboriginal people to access the bay.

‘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,’ says the artist.

The canvas is filled with an immense sky underlaid with the rusty reds of an impending sunrise. ‘There is something compelling about the constantly flashing gantry lights and the floodlights blasting away in those hours just before dawn,’ she says, ‘all rendered puny under the heavenly expanse of that vast southern sky.’

Jude Rae’s Wynne Prize 2025 Winner, Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal © the artist/Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio.

Sulman Prize 2025 Winner

Gene A’Hern’s dyslexia—which affects his depth perception—was previously a point of frustration, before his diagnosis, but nowadays, it’s a strength that has earned him this year’s Sulman Prize win. The process of abstraction is fundamental to the Blue Mountains-based artist’s method.

Sky Painting is part of a series ‘painted with expansive movements to capture a sense of scale and colour,’ Gene explains. His assemblage of colour, form and gestures often draw on organic symbolism.

‘This painting unfolded as I immersed myself in skywatching,’ the artist says of his winning work, ‘while reflecting on the ceremonial choreography of the surrounding environment. It conveys a sensation of nature’s gestures, composed to resonate from within, translating an omnipresence that comes from dust and returns to dust. The work draws on charged memories—birds singing in harmony, branches sighing in the wind, the closing curtain of the setting sun, all forming a living landscape that I breathe with and through. For me, the sky and the Blue Mountains intertwine and reveal themselves as a place of origin, deep memory and belonging.’

Gene A’Hern’s Sulman Prize 2025 winning piece, Sky painting © the artist/Art Gallery of New South Wales, Diana Panuccio

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prize 2025

Where: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Naala Nura building, Lower level 2, Art Gallery Rd, Sydney NSW 2000.
When: Saturday, May 10 until Sunday, August 17, 2025.
Price: Adult $25, concession $22, family $63 (two adults + up to three youth), youth $13 (12-17 years), children under 12 enter free.

Visit on Wednesdays from 5pm to 10pm to get 2-for-1 on your tickets.

For more information, visit artgallery.nsw.gov.au