Artist Loribelle Spirovski has won the 2025 Archibald prize people’s choice category for her portrait of didgeridoo/yidaki player William Barton, painted entirely with her fingers.
Spirovski, a four-time finalist at the Archibald prize, Australia’s most prestigious portraiture award, won the $5,000 people’s choice category, picked from the Archibald prize finalists each year by the public. This year 40,842 votes were cast, the highest number of votes ever received.
Spirovski said it was “overwhelming and deeply humbling” to win the category.
“I am infinitely grateful to William for allowing me to paint him and so humbled by everyone’s responses to the work,” she said in a statement. “It has been a difficult few years and this whole experience is the most beautiful reprieve and reward.
Barton is a Kalkadunga man and acclaimed composer who is regarded as a virtuoso in the yidaki, playing the Indigenous instrument with classical orchestras around the world. In the past he has said it is his wish “to take the oldest culture in the world and blend it with Europe’s rich musical legacy”.
Spirovski and Barton met last year at a concert at which Spirovski’s husband, the concert pianist Simon Tedeschi, and Barton both performed. When Barton came to sit for her, Spirovski was recovering from thoracic outlet syndrome and carpal tunnel, which made it painful to hold a brush – but on the day, she was suddenly inspired to paint with her fingers instead.
“I had never painted with my hands before, beyond a little bit of blending,” she told Guardian Australia. “It was a completely spontaneous decision – it didnt even feel like a decision, it was automatic. There was zero doubt. It was pure instinct, which is a beautiful feeling.”
The painting was finished in four days; finger-painting was “very efficient” compared to working with brushes, Spirovski said: “It is like having seven brushes in one!”
Barton told Guardian Australia on Thursday that he had just returned from touring Europe when he found out. “It has been a whirlwind. I’m really chuffed that Loribelle’s magic is being recognised,” he said. “I was very honoured to be painted by her.”
That the public had chosen a portrait of himself was “very humbling” he said, “because what Loribelle has painted is not just me, it is the journey of Kalkadunga Country and it comes from a sacred place.”
Spirovski was born in 1990 in the Philippines, to Filipino and Serbian parents, and immigrated to Australia when she was eight years old. Mostly self-taught, Spirovski was previously an Archibald finalist in 2017, 2018 2019.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales hosts the Archibald each year. On Thursday the AGNSW director, Maud Page, congratulated Spirovski for her “well-deserved win and for her magnetic portrait of William Barton, rendered with expressive paint strokes and lit by Barton’s radiant smile”.
The $100,000 Archibald prize was won by Julie Fragar in May, for her portrait of fellow artist Justene Williams. The 104-year-old prize is awarded to the best portrait of a person “distinguished in art, letters, science or politics” painted by an Australian resident.
Abdul Abdullah’s Archibald portrait of his friend and fellow artist Jason Phu won him the $3,000 packing room prize, which is decided by the AGNSW staff who hang the paintings each year.
The Wynne prize for landscape painting and figurative sculpture, and the Sulman prize for genre, subject and mural painting are also awarded alongside the Archibald each year. This year the $50,000 Wynne prize went to Jude Rae for her painting Pre-dawn Sky over Port Botany Container Terminal, while the $40,000 Sulman prize went to Gene A’Hern for his work Sky Painting.
A record 2,394 entries were received across the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes this year, with more than 70% of finalists across the three awards being female artists.
All finalists in Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes 2024 will be exhibited at AGNSW until 17 August. The Archibald finalists will then tour to Geelong, Gosford, Muswellbrook, Mudgee, Shoalhaven and Coffs Harbour later this year and in 2026.
