UQP illustrators & cover artists award news

Congratualtions to cover artist for Non-Essential WorkAbdul Abdullah on his 2025 Archibald Packing Room Prize win for his piece, No mountain high enough,
oil on linen -162.4 x 136.7 cm.

The man sitting astride the horse in Abdul Abdullah’s painting is Jason Phu, an artist whose often humorous work references folk tales, personal narratives, cartoons, jokes, and demons and gods from Chinese culture. Phu won the 2015 Sulman Prize and is a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize with a portrait of actor Hugo Weaving.

Abdullah says:

He’s my best friend, we talk on the phone every day, he was the best man at my wedding, and we have travelled together. You will often see Jason wandering around. He may look without purpose, but he is undoubtedly on his way to do something. He is a ceaseless adventurer – hence his pose in this portrait – who at any one time is involved in a dozen conversations on a dozen different platforms, bringing his unique perspective to one flummoxed friend or another. He has “couch advice” tattooed on his ankle. His work may look like it was made in an instant, but we don’t see the preparation that goes into getting to that point. He may deny it, but I see his wanderings, chats and imaginings as the training for the art he makes.

Jason Phu, illustrator of the forthcoming title from Jazz Money, The Frog's First Song has also been named a finalist in the 2025 Archibald Prize for his portrait of Hugo Weaving. His piece titled older hugo from the future fighting hugo from right now in a swamp and all the frogs and insects and fish and flowers now look on,
synthetic polymer paint on canvas -183.2 x 152.5 cm

Phu says:

older hugo from the future is fighting hugo from right now in a swamp, f*** everyone is a f****** c*** aren’t they, even the older version of you who was sent back in time to stop the world falling to s*** but couldn’t resist finding you and telling you about what you were doing wrong with your life, but like in a really personal and nasty way so that you somehow got into a fight in this swamp and all the frogs and insects and fish and flowers now look on and you both just look like a bunch of f***heads d***f*** horsec*** s***eater worm rat slugs.

And lastly, The Sun Was Electric Light cover artist Holly Anderson has been named a finalist in the 2025 Wynne Prize, for her piece (also the piece used on the cover of The Sun Was Electric Light by Rachel Morton) I was a light across an ocean, oil on board 93 x 125 cm

She says:

[The piece] was inspired by the view from Adder Rock on Minjerribah.

There, [she] would watch the sun set over the ocean and see glitter paths. a phenomenon created by light reflecting off rippling water.

[She] was reminded of this shimmering effect one day when looking at the striped folds of her bedsheets in her Magadnjin apartment. She said:

I saw an affinity between the ocean’s patterns and the stripy bed’s patterns and a painterly potential to collapse the two together.

Anderson has depicted a glitter path where a body might lie along the bed, observing a connection between the eye and the landscape, the body and the world. The scene is rendered with subtle paint colours applied with a brush the exact width as the stripes themselves.

She says:

I wanted this work to conjure certain optical effects of a landscape through an everyday object, [to] explore how the impression of a landscape might continue to be felt long after we’ve left it.

Congratulations to these three artists again.