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Dempsey's people

Dempsey’s people: a folio of British street portraits 1824–1844 is the first exhibition to showcase the compelling watercolour images of English street people made by the itinerant English painter John Dempsey throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.

Tough & Tender

Art by Warwick Baker, Chris Burden, Larry Clark, Rozalind Drummond, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe and Collier Schorr explores personal relations, individual expression and fluid identity.

Portrait23: Identity

Portraiture. Not as you know it. We invite you to stretch, push, resist and transcend portraiture’s conventional constraints.

Gulgawarnigu

In partnership with Big hART we are proud to present Gulgawarnigu - Thinking of something, someone, a national presentation of digital artworks created from Ngarluma country leramagadu (Roebourne), in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Headspace 1

Headspace showcases portrait art produced by secondary students from Year 7 to Year 12 in Government, Catholic and Independent schools in Canberra and its surrounding regions extending to Wollongong, Deniliquin, Leeton, Crookwell, Bombala, Narooma and Albury

The Athlete

OBEY

Shepard Fairey is best known for his iconic poster Obama/Hope which he made in support of Barack Obama for the 2008 US election.

Elegance in exile

Elegance in exile is an exhibition surveying the work of Richard Read senior, Thomas Bock, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and Charles Rodius: four artists who, though exiled to Australia as convicts, created many of the most significant and elegant portraits of the colonial period.

First Ladies

First Ladies profiles women who have achieved noteworthy firsts over the past 100 years.

The World of Thea Proctor

The World of Thea Proctor is the Portrait Gallery's second major biographical exhibition - that is, the second exhibition to focus exclusively on the life and work of a single individual

Rennie Ellis

Rennie Ellis: Aussies All is a celebration of the life and work of the late Australian photographer Rennie Ellis.

National Youth Self Portrait Prize

An annual event, the National Youth Self Portrait Prize seeks to encourage young people to embrace self portraiture and its expressive possibilities.

Headspace 7

Headspace 7: Me and My Place, the seventh in the National Portrait Gallery's series of student exhibitions, will be presented at Commonwealth Place. Me and My Place is the curatorial theme for the 2006 exhibition.

Rick Amor

Rick Amor, noblest yet most unaffected of contemporary Australian portraitists, is also a painter of enigmatic, ominous landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes that haunt the viewer like dreams, dimly-recalled.

Idle Hours

Idle hours is an exhibition of luxurious beauty. Paintings, prints and drawings represent subjects in quiet moods and situations arranged according to the time of day they depict - reading, drawing, snoozing, bathing, sewing, gardening, sitting, looking, making love and spending tranquil time with companions. Works in the exhibition range from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present.

Max Dupain

During his long and distinguished career Max Dupain took thousands of photographs of people

Paul Kelly and The Portraits

Aspects of singer songwriter Paul Kelly’s performance persona are communicated by portraits selected from a range of artists and leading music photographers in this focus exhibition.

Open Air

Open Air is an exhibition of portraits of Australians in environments of particular significance to them.

Vanity Fair Portraits

Vanity Fair Portraits traces the birth and evolution of photographic portraiture through the archives of Vanity Fair magazine.

Time and light

This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.

Thousand Mile Stare

Thousand mile stare provides a unique portrait of people of rural Australia

Dancer

From letting loose in the loungeroom to enthralling audiences on stage, this exhibition celebrates dance and dancers.

Sideshow Alley

Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2009

In its second year at the National Portrait Gallery, and for the first time touring to other venues, the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2009 continues to present surprising perspectives on the nature of contemporary portrait photography.

Glossy - Faces Magazines Now

Magazines are the portrait galleries of the 90s... Glossy is about magazines. The exhibition presents the work of eight photographers, Australian by birth or long-term residency, who are producing portraits for publication in magazines around the world.

Masters of Fare

Masters of fare: chefs, winemakers, providores celebrates men and women who have championed the unique culinary characteristics and produce of Australia, enriching our lives with new ideas and new flavours over the past forty years.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022

The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.

Primed

Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.

Judy Cassab

The artist's diary profiles six decades of Cassab's work, from the early portrait commissions of the 1950s to later paintings that have helped confirm her eminent place in the canon of Australian portraiture.

Husbands and Wives

'I have just been to my dressing case to take a peep at you.

Clifton Pugh

This exhibition offers a comprehensive display of Clifton Pugh's portraits revealing his development and growth from tonal paintings to a unique style that was in demand from politicians, artists, academics and Australian personalities.

To Look Within

This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits in Australia, from the colonial period to the present

Uncommon Australians

This exhibition showcases portraits acquired through the generosity of the National Portrait Gallery’s Founding Patrons, L Gordon Darling AC CMG and Marilyn Darling AC.