CRAIG RUDDY Australian, B. 1968

Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 27 March - 16 May 2004, cat. 31, Winner and People's Choice Winner

Peter Ross, Let's Face It, The History of the Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, p. 127, illus.

Extensive references in the media include:

John McDonald, The Australian Financial Review, 1 April 2004, p. 22, illus.

Leo Schofield, The Bulletin, 6 April 2004, p. 69, illus.

Malcom Brown, The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 2004, p. 2

Richard Zachariah, The Australian, 21 May 2004, p. 14, illus.

Sharon Verghis, The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 July 2004, p. 14, illus.

Natasha Wallace, The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 2006, p. 5

David Gulpilil, born in Arnhem Land in 1953 and a member of the Mandalpingu Tribe, is one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal actors. At the age of only sixteen he achieved instant international recognition in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1970). He has since starred in The Last Wave, Storm Boy, Crocodile Dundee, Rabbit-proof Fence, The Tracker and Ten Canoes.

When Gulpilil is not working on a film, he returns to a traditional lifestyle in Arnhem Land. Craig Ruddy’s monumental portrait presents the actor poised between his two worlds. The extraordinarily powerful physiognomy, conjured in boldly worked charcoal and graphite, is set against colonial-style wallpaper – the same paper that lines the walls of the dining room at Kirribilli House. As Ruddy explains, ‘David is a man who crosses the lines that still divide two contrasting worlds. One is an infinite world of spiritual connection with the land and the universe as a whole, and the other a materialistic conformation of western civilisation. Simplicities and complexities infiltrate both worlds and David seems to strike a balance’. ¹

During 2005 and 2006 the portrait was the subject of a much publicised court dispute about its media and technique. Justice John Hamilton of the New South Wales Supreme Court found that implicit in the Gallery trustees’ right to decide the best painted portrait in the Archibald Prize is the right to determine what qualifies as a painted portrait in the first place. As Sebastian Smee commented in The Australian, ‘In coming to this conclusion, Justice Hamilton closely followed judge Ernest Roper in the notorious Dobell case of 1944. In that instance, William Dobell’s prize-winning portrait of fellow artist Joshua Smith was declared by the plaintiff to be a caricature, and therefore ineligible as a contender in the portrait prize. Roper sensibly decided it was not his business to define the difference between a portrait and a caricature, and Justice Hamilton has followed suit’. ²

1. Quoted in exhibition label, The Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004, no. 31.
2. ‘Portrait of a mad lawsuit’, The Australian, 15 June 2006, p. 7.