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Six-time Archibald prize finalist Richard Lewer had wanted to paint Pitjantjatjara Elder, artist and healer Iluwanti Ken for a long time, and the wait has paid off with his first win of the $100,000 portrait prize.
“I was a very lucky man to paint Iluwanti,” said Lewer, motioning towards his subject, who had journeyed from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands of South Australia to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see the artist receive the 2026 honour.
“It’s an absolute pleasure that you gave me your time [on] your Country and you let me paint you.”
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Deborah Mailman sat in rusty red sand on Arrernte country in central Australia, and she felt her character’s deep grief. She was filming a scene in Warwick Thornton’s 1930s frontier western Wolfram, playing Pansy, an Indigenous woman whose children have been stolen from her.
As her bundled baby cries, Pansy silently cuts her hair off with a knife – “a grieving ritual”, Mailman says – even though her missing children might still be alive.
Mailman is the mother of two boys herself, Henry, 19, and Oliver, 16. Portraying Pansy’s anguish, she says, “requires no acting”.
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Suzy Izzard is a woman for all seasons – and all roles, it seems. This month, the British actor and comedian – still happy to be known as Eddie in a professional context – is touring Australia in The Remix, reimagining highlights from her 35 years in comedy. Then in June, she returns with her unique take on Hamlet, adapted by her brother Mark, in which she plays all 26 characters in Shakespeare’s great tale of grief, revenge and vulnerability.
“We did a Q and A after a very early show in New York and one person said, ‘I see Ophelia as a twin soul of Hamlet.’ We liked and ran with that,” says Izzard via video conference.
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