Christopher Malouf | 2019 Archibald Prize

Background: Christopher Malouf
Chris is a past rower and coach from St Ignatius College, Riverview who, after finishing coaching at Riverview joined the University of NSW Rowing Club. In 2015 Chris started coaching at UNSWRC and now currently coaches and rows competitively with the club. On top of his commitment to UNSWRC, Chris has been a Boat Race Official with Rowing NSW for the past 1.5 years after making the transition from a boat driver.

A man of many talents, Chris has decided to embark on the journey to enter into the 2019 Archibald Prize and chose to paint the portrait of Steve Price. Steve Price is an Australian journalist and radio broadcaster who is currently working at Macquarie Media broadcasting on 2GB.

For those not familiar with the Archibald Price, what is the process of submitting artwork for the Archibald?

The artist must have at least one sitting with the subject.
The portrait is to be ‘preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics’ and painted within the 12 months prior to the submission.
All entries are due in the first week of April. If selected as a finalist for the Archibald Prize or for the Salon des Refusés, the artist is notified at the beginning of May.
Artists can only submit one artwork each year

The process of judging the Archibald is as follows:

The judging panel - the 11 trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW – will whittle down to the top finalists over one weekend (In 2018, 57 finalists out of 794 entries were selected).
During the culling process, each portrait is brought before the judges and immediately placed in a No or Maybe category. The works are moved around the gallery space so viewed in different conditions.

Steve Price was interviewed following the completion of the portrait and asked about his decision to commit to this project.

Why did you agree to let Christopher paint you?
I decided about 3 years ago when I decided to spend nearly 7 weeks in the jungle, doing weird things and eating weird food, that when you get an opportunity which someone asks you to do that is completely out of left field and out of your comfort zone that you should definitely say yes because you never know when you are going to get another opportunity to do it.

Have you ever sat for a portrait before or had a portrait of you painted before?
Never ever had a painting done of me before. And I am quite honoured that someone would ask me to sit and pose for a painting like this. Its rather odd looking at yourself looking in bigger than life size but I certainly think that Chris has captured incredibly well my expression. It was a real experience to do it.

How was the experience for you, would you do it again?
Um, I think the world only deserves one portrait of Steve Price, I’m not sure that anyone would want more than one and I think the way in which it has been captured is so unique that you would never repeat the process. But it was not intimidating, it was fun and it’s interesting to see someone else’s interpretation particularly of your expression and what it does is it that I think it cleverly captures that the fact that I’m constantly thinking about stuff. If I had to describe it would be a person who’s constantly thinking.

Your final thoughts on the finished artwork?
I reckon its brilliant, it’s not tried to be anything I’m not. It tried to be an honest portrait of somebody who is rather hard to capture considering I wear glasses and a receding hairline, grey hair. I’m not an oil painting but this is an oil painting so it’s very exciting.

All entries are due in the first week of April and the winner of the Archibald and Packers Prize are announced on the 10th of May 2019.

Check out the final artwork submited for the 2019 Archibald Prize