“. . . restore dignity to the human semblance.”

The Percivals is a national biennial portrait competition held since 2007 in Townsville at the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in North Queensland. The painting and photographic prizes are acquisitive and carry a winner’s purse of $40,000 and $10,000, respectively, there is also a non-acquisitive animal portrait prize worth $1,000.

Although there is a certain North Queensland accent to the Percivals, the prizes have a national reach attracting about 400 entries from almost all the states and territories. From these, 122 artworks by 114 finalists were selected. What is commendable is the exceptional professionalism of the competition, with three very highly credentialled preselection judges for the painting award – Francoise Lane, John McPhee, and Christine Clark – who are all widely known in the field. The finalist judges are also well known nationally: Serena Bentley, the senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery, for photography; the animal portrait judge, the highly acclaimed artist, Ron McBurnie; and myself, for the painting award.

How relevant is painted portraiture in 2026? Some time ago, painted portraiture seemed on the nose; it was something deemed obsolete and old fashioned and in a digital age where each day more photographs are snapped than in the entire twentieth century, what’s the point of a painstaking oil, acrylic, or watercolour painted portrait? I feel that at a moment when human identity is being eroded digitally, through deep fakes and AI – it is the painted portrait that can try to restore dignity to the human semblance. The great writer Maksim Gorky once said, “‘I am a human being’ should be pronounced with pride.” Many of the fifty-four paintings at the Percivals Painting Prize exhibition explore what it means to be human, and, in art, this is something that may be difficult to achieve in art forms other than portraiture.

All the paintings in this exhibition go far beyond capturing mere visual likenesses and make comments on the state of the world, on humankind, on our environment and our place in it. Some are humorous and witty, others distressing and deeply troubling. Some have an immediate impact, an instant ‘wow’ factor; others are slow burners, as you are gradually sucked into the works, they reveal their magic and profundity. The paintings challenge you and, as you respond, they slowly unfold. The more time that you spend with them, the more that you will see in them.

The $40,000 Percival Portrait Painting Prize for 2026 was awarded to the Brisbane-based artist Elena Churilova and her brilliant watercolour painting with the awkward title, Smartphonisation, or Gateway to inner reality. It is a portrait of her adult son glued to his smartphone as he walks down the street. In the space surrounding him there is a dingo marking its territory and some strolling ibises, passages of text from a student enrolment form, and other incongruous details. Are we seeing a portrait, a selfie, or a stage on which a mass of information thrown up by the smartphone jostles with reality? Has the smartphone that has so much revolutionised our lives now started to erode our reality and identity?

Highly Commended paintings were by Cutler Footway, Denise Leigh Cross, and Vicki Sullivan. The winner of the photographic portrait prize was Cassandra McMahon and the animal portrait prize Catherine Stewart.

The Percivals 2026 punch considerably above their weight and cannot be considered as just another provincial art prize. They have captured an important place on the national art calendar.

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Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA works nationally and internationally as an art historian, art critic, and curator.

 

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
23 May to 30 August 2026
Queensland

Originally published in print – Art Almanac, August 2026 issue, pp. 36–40