WA’s home-grown art prize – and Australia’s richest portraiture prize – The Lester Prize has announced the forty Australian artists chosen as finalists for the 2025 Main Awards. More than 1,000 submissions were made this year – the largest number of submissions since the organisation was founded in 2007.
In keeping with The Lester Prize ethos of ‘art accessible for all’, an independent judging panel selected work from both established and emerging Australian artists, with this year’s pool including 17 returning finalists…
The Lester Prize for portraiture has announced 40 Australian artists chosen as finalists for the 2025 Main Awards, selected from over 1000 submissions – a record in the organisation’s 18-year history. Highlights include a self-portrait on eggshell by Ross Potter, titled Cost of Living, and Open Door, an eight-part portrait that combines knitting, collage and oil paint by South Australian artist Amy Hamilton. The exhibition of finalists’ works will be held at WA Museum Boola Bardip from 19 September to 16 November 2025.
Sid Pattni’s work explores the intricacies of identity, culture, and belonging within a post-colonial framework. His art contributes to the ongoing discourse around diasporic identity and the role of visual storytelling in communicating lived experience.
A Lester Prize-winning artist will head to Esperance to share his knowledge with creatives and youth during a one-week artist-in-residency.
Contemporary Australian painter Ben Howe won the 2024 Richard Lester Prize for Portraiture with his oil on panel piece titled Cartagena Library.
The Lester Prize, Australia’s richest prize for portraiture, is now seeking entries from home-grown talent. Last year, held for the first time at WA Museum Boola Bardip, the award’s exhibition enjoyed record-breaking visitor numbers.
The award is artist and community-driven, rather than focusing on the identities of those sitting for portraits.
La Salle College Year 11 student Beatie was awarded the School Workshop Prize for her Oil on Canvas work “Lunch in the City” at the 2025 Lester Prize for Portraiture Youth Awards.
The Lester Prize for Portraiture Youth Awards aim to recognise and foster the creative talents of young, aspiring, and emerging artists and is open to all secondary school students across Australia.
For youth artists across Australia, the Lester Prize Youth Awards is no better avenue to demonstrate their talents and immense passion for art. After submissions from over 250 students from years 7-12, the judges from the Lester Prize have whittled down the entries to just 30 finalists.
Entries are now open for the 2025 Lester Prize Main Awards, one of Australia’s most lucrative art competitions.
The 2024 season enjoyed record-breaking visitor numbers to the exhibition, held for the first time at WA Museum Boola Bardip. The Lester Prize drives the advancement of the artists as opposed to a focus on those sitting for portraits.
Western Australia’s premier portrait prize, The Lester Prize offers a prize pool of over $120,000 spread across two exhibitions, held at WA Museum Boola Bardip, Perth – from 14 September to 17 November 2024 – and ten categories, including the Main Prize’s People’s Choice Award which was awarded to a poignant oil on linen work entitled Shirley by artist and Belmont MLA Cassie Rowe.
Art lovers and artists celebrated 18 years of the Lester Prize at a private viewing of the national exhibition held in Perth.
Cocktails and canapes were served at the WA Museum Boola Bardip and guests heard from some of this year’s artists talk about their experience as a finalist in front of their own portraits.
Ben Howe was the recipient of the 2024 Richard Lester Prize for Portraiture for his painting, Cartagena Library.
Living at the foot of one of Australia’s most spectacular national parks, natural beauty isn’t hard to come by for Jenna Pickering.
But it’s the people of the Pilbara that inspire her artwork.
“People [say], ‘You must have so many landscapes to paint’, but … I like people,” she said.
There are few subjects so universal in art as the human portrait. Whether you are a regular gallery-goer or brand new to exhibitions, the portrait has a universal connective quality with its audiences.
The Lester Prize in Western Australia keeps this ethos at its heart. One of Australia’s most illustrious and prestigious art prizes, The Lester Prize (formerly known as the Black Swan Prize for Portraiture) encourages submissions to explore the depths and reaches of identity as expressed through portraiture.
Julia Donney always had an interest in art, but it was not until the pandemic that she picked up a paintbrush and created a warm, smiling portrait of two colleagues she had not seen for months.
The Sydney artist last year entered her work, Smoko, into the Lester Prize, a portraiture competition based in Perth and open to artists from around Australia.
He’s been known for his quips and cheeky comebacks on ABC Radio Perth for years. But he’s never front and centre – he prefers to stay on the side lines. He’s an enigma. We want you to get creative and give us your take on The Slim but Savage One.
It’s time to unleash your creativity and enter the Slim but Savage Selection portrait competition!
Members of the Lester Collective converged at Lawson Flats for a special conversation with Perth Festival visual arts curator Annika Kristensen and director of arts and culture at Element and Temp Gallery founder Kate Parker.
Kristensen discussed contemporary art in Australia, while Parker detailed the experiences of emerging artists in WA.
A Tasmanian artist has been named a finalist in Western Australia’s premier portrait prize.
Born and raised in Launceston, Nikita is passionate about the stories that matter to locals. When she is not at work you can find Nikita adventuring around Tasmania or spending time with family and friends.
Artist Jenny Davies shows the premier the portrait she has painted of him to enter in this year’s Lester Prize, to be announced in August.
Jenny said, “Premier Mark McGowan’s approval rating has soared over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am intrigued by his popularity with Gen-Z and his wide online appeal on TikTok and other social media platforms. It is oddly fascinating to see a politician achieving such celebrity status and I wanted to incorporate this aspect in my painting. When I met with the Premier, he seemed bemused by his #statedaddy status but generously participated in the sitting with good humour.”
One of Australia’s most recognised and prestigious portrait prizes, The Lester Prize, is returning for 2021 with 40 finalists selected out of more than 750 entries from around the country.
Formerly known as The Black Swan Prize for Portraiture, this will be the awards 15th year and the 40 finalists’ work will be on public display in the Art Gallery of Western Australia for six weeks from this Saturday 16 October until Monday 29 November.
Walking through the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s Lester Prize exhibition, I couldn’t help but consider the 1890 Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The story – in short and without spoilers – is much about an artist’s ability to capture the true essence, and quite literally the soul, of their subject. In combining intent, vision, technique and material to canvas, artwork becomes translation – where the artist communicates and shares not only part of their subjects’ story, but part of theirs as well.
Sydney-based actor and artist Liam Nunan is the winner of the Richard Lester Prize for Portraiture 2019, for his portrait of fellow actor Jonny Hawkins. In addition to the cash prize of $50,000, Nunan receives two economy class return tickets to any Singapore Airlines destination valued at $7,320.
The Lester Prize is WA’s premier portrait prize. Formerly known as The Black Swan Prize for Portraiture, this award is now in its 13th year and boasts a prize pool of over $77,000. It was renamed in 2019 in honour of the award’s leading patron, Richard Lester AM, and for the last four years has been held at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
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