Layne Beachley AO (b. 1972), former surfer and businesswoman, is the world's most successful female professional surfer. Growing up in Manly, Beachley had a negligible amateur surfing record before turning professional in 1989. By the time she was twenty she was ranked number six in the world. Over the course of the 1990s she persevered through debilitating illness to triumph at the World Championships in 1998. She won the same title for the next five consecutive years, between 1999 and 2003, and took a seventh title in 2006, her seventeenth year on the tour. Her other women's surfing records include riding the biggest wave ever, gaining the most world championship tour victories and earning the most money on the circuit. Inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2011, Beachley is now chair of Surfing Australia, and is a powerful speaker and ambassador for various charities and causes.
Commissioned to portray Beachley, Petrina Hicks said that she chose to make a stark representation of the champion as she 'wanted her eyes to be the central focus … I realised these were where all her strength is revealed'. During the shoot in Hicks' Bondi apartment, where she took both a still photograph and a digital video, Beachley observed that in her experience, 'whales look you right in the eye, but sharks stare straight through you'.
Commissioned 2008
© Commonwealth of Australia
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Two professionals; Australian surfer Layne Beachley and photographer Petrina Hicks, combine their strengths to achieve a remarkable portrait.
Eye to Eye is a summer Portrait Gallery Collection remix arranged by degree of eye contact – from turned away with eyes closed all the way through to right-back-at-you – as we explore artists’ and subjects’ choices around the direction of the gaze.
