Since its inception the National Portrait Gallery has focussed on young people as both art makers and audiences. An important part of our program is to provide a forum for people to express themselves through portraiture. With the generous support of the Tallis Foundation and the Association of Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, the National Portrait Gallery is offering a prize of $10,000 for the most outstanding self portrait produced by a young person in the year preceding the prize.

The inaugural National Youth Self Portrait Prize seeks to encourage young people to embrace self portraiture and its expressive possibilities. The National Portrait Gallery seeks entries that reflect a broad interpretation of self portraiture from a broad cross-section of young people.

Underpinning the National Youth Self Portrait Prize is a belief that self portraiture is a pertinent and potent art form through which individuals can conceptualise their experience of the world and express what they have learned from it. Entrants were invited to create a self portrait in any of the following media: drawing, print, painting, traditional or digital still photography.