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Michelle Simmons, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by the Sid and Fiona Myer Family Foundation 2018

This airport’s gone to the dogs

Right-hound man

Portrait Gallery unveils new commission

The National Portrait Gallery unveiled its most recent portrait commission for the collection on Thursday 30 November 2017.

Twenty new portraits marking Portrait Gallery’s twentieth birthday

To celebrate the National Portrait Gallery’s twentieth anniversary as an institution, twenty portraits of outstanding Australian individuals have been commissioned for the permanent collection. This is the largest undertaking for the Gallery’s commissioning program in its twenty-year existence.

National Portrait Gallery unveils twenty new portrait commissions to celebrate twenty years

The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled twenty new portrait commissions of Australian leaders and individualists as part of its twentieth birthday celebrations in a new exhibition, 20/20: Celebrating twenty years with twenty new portrait commissions.

Alwar Balasubramaniam

Born in 1971 in Tamil Nadu, Southern India, Alwar Balasubramaniam's sculptures, prints and installations challenge our perceptions while creating forms for the invisible and the intangible.

Portrait Donors

Richard Avedon: The existential lens

The work of Richard Avedon is perhaps most readily associated with intimate images of very famous people. These portraits of 20th century superstars are well known because they resist the idealisation of celebrity and reveal the humanness of revered individuals.

Lucy Culliton

Most well-regarded pictures of chickens show them dead. A reliable way to tell if a chicken in a painting is dead is to check if it’s hanging upside down, because unlike, say, cockatoos, chickens don’t practise inversion for enjoyment in life.