The Adam Portraiture Award 2024
20 February 2025 - 13 April 2025
First Floor Galleries
Touring from New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata
The Adam Portraiture Award is Aotearoa’s most prestigious and popular portraiture prize.
The biennial competition for painted portraits is held at The New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata and generously sponsored by the Adam Foundation. The Adam Portraiture Award provides painters from Aotearoa at all stages of their careers with the opportunity to showcase their talents on the national stage, while also playing an important role in recording the changing face of Aotearoa.
The inaugural competition was held in 2000 and called the National Portrait Competition. It has been known as the Adam Portraiture Award since 2002. Since 2006 the winning artworks have been acquired into the New Zealand Portrait Gallery collection. In 2020 the Award expanded its judging panel to two judges.
First Prize: $20,000
Runner up: $2,500
People’s Choice: $2,500
The Adam Portraiture Award is generously funded by the Adam Foundation
The Adam Portraiture Award is a biennial competition for painted portraits of New Zealanders, by New Zealanders and presents a breadth of responses to identity and representation.
This year, our judges are Felicity Milburn, lead Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, and Karl Maughan, one of New Zealand’s most recognisable artists.
This year, 37 finalists were chosen from 451 overall entries. The finalists’ exhibition is on display at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata from 23 May to 11 August. A selection of artworks will then tour to multiple venues around the country in late 2024 and early 2025.
The exhibition catalogue is available for purchase from the Gallery Shop.
Winner:
Maryanne Shearman
Tuhi-Ao
oil on canvas
2024
“Tuhi-Ao Bailey is one of Aotearoa’s leading climate activists, an unwavering voice for kaitiakitanga. She has always struck me as a person living her kaupapa, authentic to a fault. I initially planned on capturing her characteristic solemn expression; I hoped her mournful eyes would disrupt us, but in the end she and I decided on this pose - a full smile mid-kōrero, and a gesture which catches the light. She is standing in the Parihaka food-forest, next to the awa Waitotoroa. Ko ia te whenua, ko te whenua ko ia.”
“We saw much more than just exceptional realism in this striking work; it’s a brilliant piece of painting. The artist has captured the subject’s face and smile in a way that makes her alive with joy, but also gives a strong sense of her character and life beyond this moment. The light plays across her face, her hand points to us and welcomes us in with a gesture that is dignified and generous. We enjoyed the dewy leaves at the front of the painting, and the spectacular skill that is apparent in the treatment of the quilted jacket and the soft cotton top beneath. But it was the artist’s combination of accuracy with looseness that lifted the work for us. The bush in the background is softly, almost enigmatically rendered in contrast to the foreground, so it doesn’t distract or detract from our connection with the subject. Occasional flourishes of brushwork in the plants around the edges add depth and movement to the composition. The artist has succeeded in capturing an authentic and layered sense of the subject’s character and also her sense of openness and fun. Together, these elements brought us back to all the things that painting can be”