Ben Apfelbaum

ARCHIBALD PRIZE 2018 : PORTRAIT OF JIMMY BARNES WINS PACKER PRIZE

In his first year as Judge of the Archibald Packing Prize, having negotiated 52% of the vote after Steve Peters retired from the Gallery in 2017 head packer Brett Cuthbertson and his Packing Room team have awarded the 2018 Packing Room Prize to Sydney artist and debut finalist Jamie Preisz  for his portrait of singer/songwriter Jimmy Barnes AO titled Jimmy(Title fight).

Cuthbertson who spotted the work on day one of Archibald Prize submissions to the Gallery said that none of the entries he saw after the arrival of the Barnes portrait  matched up to the attraction this work held for him.

Artist Jamie Preisz, after seeing an interview in which Barnes spoke about his troubles, said that it was a pleasure and privilege to paint Jimmy.

Preisz had lost his sister to suicide and paid tribute to his mum in helping him get through the devastating loss of his sister. Naturally his mum was at the Gallery to share in his win. Barnes said he enjoyed sitting for Preisz “It’s good to get the opportunity to work with a young artist.”

Barnes said he enjoyed sitting for Preisz “It’s good to get the opportunity to work with a young artist.”

The Packing Room Prize, a cash prize of $1,500, has never been awarded the Archibald Prize.

Finalists for the Archibald, Sulman and Wynne exhibitions were announced on Thursday 3rd May as were the finalists for the Young Archie competition.

Finalists in all Prizes will be exhibited in the Gallery from the 12th May to the 9th September 2018.

Finalists in the Archibald Prize will then tour to regional New South Wales and Victoria  until June 2019.

All pics by Ben Apfelbaum.

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.