Abdul Abdullah wins 2025 Archibald Prize Packing Room Prize with Jason Phu portrait

2 May 2025

Melbourne and Bangkok, Thailand, based Australian artist Abdul Abdullah was named winner of the 2025 Archibald Prize Packing Room Prize yesterday, for his portrait — titled No mountain high enough — of Jason Phu.

The announcement of the Packing Room Prize is a bit like the beginning of Archibald Prize season, the annual arts award for Australian portraiture, and runs through to the closing of the Archibald exhibition, being Sunday 17 August this year.

Entry is open to any Australian artist, who’s painting was produced in the twelve months prior to the closing date for entries. The work should feature a “distinguished” Australian subject, usually in the arts, sciences, or politics, who, further, sat for the artist, face to face, while the work was produced.

Nearly two-thousand-four-hundred works were submitted this year, for the Archibald, together with the also annual Wynne (landscape painting), and Sulman (painting, genre, or mural painting) Prizes, the second highest of entries in the history of the prizes.

It can only be imagined how busy the loading dock at the Art Gallery of NSW must have been during the entry stage. The winners of all three awards will be announced next week, on Friday 9 May 2025.