Angus McDonald has won the People's Choice award for the 2024 Archibald Prize for his portrait of writer and academic Marcia Langton, one of the architects of the Voice to Parliament.
The artist first sat with Langton, a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara nations of Queensland, before the 2023 Voice referendum, and completed it afterwards. But he stresses that the work is not about the Voice.
"For me, it's more about a tribute to someone who's spent over 50 years fighting and having small victories, but also dealing with disappointments along the way, including some of them that are a little bit bigger, especially the Voice last year," he tells ABC Arts.
He wanted to portray Langton as a pivotal figure in Australian history and convey her preoccupation with making the nation a better country.
The winning work — as voted by more than 21,000 visitors to the exhibition — shows a silver-haired Langton against a dark blue sky filled with lilac clouds, her eyes gazing upwards.
In his artist statement, he explains that he placed her to the right of centre "to suggest a sense of stepping away and handing the baton to a younger group of activists after a lifetime of tireless commitment. She gazes up and to the left to reflect that she has persistently followed her own path".
As he told ABC Arts: "She's followed her own path and she's too busy to sometimes engage with all of us … so I thought I'd paint her that way, as if she's got other things on her mind."
McDonald previously won the award, worth $5,000, in 2020 for his portrait of Kurdish Iranian writer, refugee and activist Behrouz Boochani. He is now only the fifth artist to win the People's Choice prize more than once, since it was first awarded in 1988.
He is a seven-time finalist in the Archibald Prize, whose other subjects include lawyer and refugee advocate Mariam Veiszadeh (2019) and singer Abbe May (2015).
A portrait of McDonald, painted with a toothbrush, by artist and refugee Mostafa Azimitabar is also an Archibald Prize finalist this year.
Back in June, the winner of the $100,000 Archibald Prize was announced as Sydney artist Laura Jones, for her portrait of author and environmentalist Tim Winton. Her win made her the 12th woman to win the prize in its 103-year history.
And in May, Melbourne street artist Matt Adnate won the Packing Room Prize, worth $3,000, with his portrait of Yolngu rapper Baker Boy.
Selected from 1,005 entries, the 57 finalists in the Archibald Prize include portraits of recently freed activist Julian Assange and Saltburn actor Jacob Elordi.
Having worked as an artist for more than 30 years, McDonald said in his acceptance speech that winning the People's Choice was galvanising.
"It's great to think after all this time I can still make work that can touch people and resonate with them."
Past winners of the Archibald People's Choice award include Jaq Grantford for her portrait of actor Noni Hazlehurst (2023) and Jeremy Eden for his portrait of actor Samuel Johnson (2022).
A great Australian thinker
Langton is the seventh Indigenous sitter to feature in a People's Choice award-winning portrait. It's not her first time being painted for the prize either — a portrait of her by Sam Leach was a finalist in the 2009 Archibald Prize.
In his speech, McDonald said he shared the award with her.
"When people vote … they might be responding to the painting, but they're also expressing admiration and respect and possibly affection for Professor Marcia Langton.
"She's one of our greatest ever thinkers. She's spent a lifetime fighting and struggling for recognition, reconciliation and justice for our First Nations people.
"Those 50 years of struggle are all done because she cares, and cares deeply … about making our country better, making our society better. And we all owe a debt of gratitude to her for that."
He tells ABC Arts that he had admired Langton from afar for a long time.
"To be honest, one of the things I wanted to do, apart from sharing Marcia with the public if the work was selected for the Archibald, was to be able to get in a room with her, cheat my way in a kind of slightly quasi-intimate setting and just talk to her."
The conversations they shared — about everything from her life and the public criticism she's faced, to how to have a better work-life balance — have blossomed into a friendship.
At the award announcement, McDonald read a statement from Langton, who has not yet been able to see her prize-winning portrait: "I love this painting as a portrait and as a work of art … I am so thrilled and excited that the portrait received the People's Choice award, which is a great honour."
Finding fulfilment
McDonald's first entries into the Archibald Prize were portraits of other artists, including his then-girlfriend Zoë MacDonell (2009) and Tim Maguire (2012).
"When I was a younger artist, I just did portraits and threw them in the Archibald because everyone did, and I didn't really know why I was doing that, except that I liked painting portraits," he says.
But he says his practice changed in 2016, when he visited Greece in the midst of the migrant crisis in Europe, as more than 5 million people fled the Syrian civil war. From then he started painting figures including Boochani and Langton.
"In the last few years, I've more specifically chosen [to paint] people that are involved in social change," he says.
"For me, the Archibald — which transcends the art world, everybody knows about it — is an incredible platform to be able to share the story of people I admire."
It's an intention that aligns with his work as a documentary filmmaker: He made a short film about refugees living on Manus Island, MANUS, in 2019, and feature documentary Freedom Is Beautiful, about Kurdish refugees Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa Azimitabar, which premiered at Sydney Film Festival in 2023.
"[My trip to Greece] really had a huge influence on the way I wanted to use my practice going forward," he says.
"That's really why I've chosen subjects like this. I feel that my practice has a lot more meaning now and that I can try and do very positive things with it."
A new exhibition of McDonald's work, titled Unhinged, is scheduled to open in Sydney this year.
The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2024 exhibition runs until September 8 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, followed by a regional tour.
