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NSW artist Kate Stevens has won Australia’s premier prize for female portraitists, the 2023 Portia Geach Memorial Award, with a painting of former military lawyer David McBride.
Stevens won the $30,000 prize for The Whistleblower, her portrait of McBride, who is facing trial this month over the alleged leak of documents to the ABC that formed the basis of its “Afghan Files” investigation about potential war crimes by Australian soldiers.
Kate Stevens’ The Whistleblower, winner of the 2023 Portia Geach Memorial Award.Credit: Stephen Best
McBride, who faces jail time for his actions, served in Afghanistan with Australia’s special forces and was medically discharged in 2017 with post-traumatic stress disorder.
He is the son of the renowned Sydney obstetrician, Dr William McBride, who raised the alarm on the anti-nausea drug thalidomide in the 1960s and was later struck off the medical register for falsifying research results in a bid to challenge the safety of another drug.
David McBride’s upcoming book The Nature of Honour, to be published by Penguin Random House on November 14, documents his colourful life as a former soldier and reality TV star. As a law student, McBride won a scholarship to Oxford, where then rugby coach (former prime minister) Tony Abbott recommended he take up boxing.
Yvette Coppersmith’s self portrait, a finalist in the 2023 Portia Gech Memorial Award.Credit: Stephen Best
Stevens, who also won the richest annual portrait prize for women in 2011, said that “the timing is brilliant”.
“With David’s trial date set for November, the first Australian facing prison time in relation to war crimes [potentially] committed by Australia’s Special Forces in Afghanistan, is the whistleblower brave enough to speak out. Australia needs to do more to protect our whistleblowers so that uncomfortable truths continue to be revealed and the powerful are held to account.
“David is being prosecuted, and we should all care about what he did and thank him,” Stevens said in accepting the award.
The Braidwood-based artist travelled to McBride’s Sydney home to paint him, as part of an ongoing series she is doing on Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and the landscape there.
Jacqueline Hennessy’s self-portrait, a finalist in the 2023 Portia Geach Memorial Award.Credit: Stephen Best
In 2018, Stevens was awarded the inaugural $50,000 Evelyn Chapman Art Award which she has used to research war at the Australian War Memorial. Earlier this year she mounted an exhibition titled Occupied, focused on the bombing of Gaza, at Canberra’s Contemporary Art space.
“The story of Gaza had been in and out of the news cycle my whole life, yet people were so willing to ignore it … it is incredibly relevant now,” she said.
The Portia Geach judging panel included Manly Art Gallery curator Katherine Roberts; the curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW, Natalie Wilson; and S.H. Ervin Gallery director, Jane Watters. They selected 57 finalists from 374 entries received from female artists across Australia.
On Kate Stevens’ portrait, they said: “The painting confidently demonstrates the artist’s painterly skills as well as evident empathy with her subject.
“The judges admired the intensity and authenticity of the subject as depicted by the artist and responded to the powerful narrative of the two-panelled work.”
Other finalists included Yvette Coppersmith, Jacqueline Hennessy, Tsering Hannaford, Caroline Zilinksy and Kathrin Longhurst.
The exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in The Rocks is showing until December 17.
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