Sydney artist Michelle Hiscock has been announced as the winner of the 2025 Portia Geach Memorial Award, the pre-eminent portraiture prize for women in Australia, receiving $30,000 for her portrait of artist and designer Simon Buttonshaw entitled The Weather Watcher after Zurbarán.
On her winning portrait, Hiscock writes, “Simon Buttonshaw is both an artist and a legend in the surfing world. While working as the artistic director for Quiksilver internationally for decades, he never lost sight of his fine art practice. The title of the work is derived from his monumental Weather Journal project in which, for more than thirty years, he has recorded the weather each morning in a series of large, hand-made ledgers . . . page after page of landscapes and handwritten notes, details that only a surfer would notice. Simon has an abiding love of art history so it was no surprise that he would suggest a fascinating model for my portrait of him. The portrait was conceived in the wake of the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. I travelled to his Bells Beach home and he suggested a pose adopted from the Spanish master Zurbarán.”
Michelle Hiscock, The Weather Watcher after Zurbarán (Simon Buttonshaw, artist), oil on linen
First awarded in 1965, the Portia Geach Memorial Award was established by Florence Kate Geach in memory of her sister, artist Portia Geach. Perpetual is trustee of the Award and as per the direction of the will, it is presented annually to an Australian female artist for the best portrait painted from life of a man or woman distinguished in art, letters or the sciences.
The judging panel included Natalie Wilson, Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Katherine Roberts, Senior Curator at Manly Art Gallery and Museum and Jane Watters, Director, S.H. Ervin Gallery. The panel commented: ‘We admired the portrait’s intensity and the intimacy the artist has to the subject; the painting invites deeper enquiry of the layered meaning to reveal an intertwined theme. They acknowledge the artist’s subtle reference to the hood figure in both Old Master paintings and contemporary youth culture.”
On her win, Hiscock adds, “It’s such an intimate, heartfelt portrait of someone facing the ultimate challenge in life and to know that the panel must have felt that was incredibly affirming.”
An exhibition of all finalists’ works is open for public viewing at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in The Rocks, Sydney, from 19 September to 2 November 2025.
