© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
Australia's Creative Diaspora
Photographed by Nathalie Latham
Previous exhibition, 2007
Paris based Australian photographer and filmmaker Nathalie Latham has an ongoing interest in the creative achievements of other Australian artists living in various locations around the globe.
Rarely Everage
The Lives of Barry Humphries
Previous exhibition, 2002
The exhibition begins with Barry's childhood in Camberwell, Melbourne and chronicles his days as a struggling actor in Australia and England, his creation of characters including Barry McKenzie, Dame Edna Everage, Sandy Stone and Sir Les Patterson
Jenny Sages
Paths to Portraiture
Previous exhibition, 2010
The exhibition Sages examines the process of portrait making through four large-scale portraits of women by Jenny Sages, paired with intimate preparatory drawings.
Depth of Field
Portrait Photography from the Collection
Previous exhibition, 2004
Over the last five years the National Portrait Gallery has developed a collection of portrait photographs that reflects both the strength and diversity of Australian achievement as well as the talents of our photographers.
The World of Thea Proctor
Previous exhibition, 2005
The World of Thea Proctor is the Portrait Gallery's second major biographical exhibition - that is, the second exhibition to focus exclusively on the life and work of a single individual
Mirror With A Memory
Photographic Portraiture in Australia
Previous exhibition, 2000
This is the first major exhibition to examine photographic portraiture in Australia, from its beginnings in the early 1840s to the present day
Husbands and Wives
Photographic Portraits from 19th Century Australia
Previous exhibition, 2010
'I have just been to my dressing case to take a peep at you.
Australia and the Nobel Prize
Previous exhibition, 2003
This unique exhibition will give an insight into the private lives, pursuits and work of all the Nobel laureates associated with Australia
Heads of the People
A Portrait of Colonial Australia
Previous exhibition, 2000
For Tom Roberts - Australia's best nineteenth-century portrait painter - neither a proto-national portrait gallery nor more popular collections of portrait heads, were sufficient public celebrations for the notables of Australian history
Masters of Fare
Chefs, winemakers, providores
Previous exhibition, 2004
Masters of fare: chefs, winemakers, providores celebrates men and women who have championed the unique culinary characteristics and produce of Australia, enriching our lives with new ideas and new flavours over the past forty years.
Rick Amor
21 Portraits
Previous exhibition, 2014
Rick Amor, noblest yet most unaffected of contemporary Australian portraitists, is also a painter of enigmatic, ominous landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes that haunt the viewer like dreams, dimly-recalled.
Sideshow Alley
Infamy, the macabre & the portrait
Previous exhibition, 2015
Death masks, post-mortem drawings and other spooky and disquieting portraits... Come and see how portraits of infamous Australians were used in the 19th century.
Elegance in exile
Portrait drawings from colonial Australia
Previous exhibition, 2012
Elegance in exile is an exhibition surveying the work of Richard Read senior, Thomas Bock, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and Charles Rodius: four artists who, though exiled to Australia as convicts, created many of the most significant and elegant portraits of the colonial period.
Time and light
In Gallery Seven
Previous exhibition, 2023
This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.
Primed
Some Prime Ministers
Previous exhibition, 2019
Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.
Nicholas Harding
28 Portraits
Previous exhibition, 2017
Nicholas Harding: 28 portraits features paintings of Robert Drewe, John Bell and Hugo Weaving alongside gorgeously coloured recent oil portraits, delicate gouaches and bold ink and charcoal drawings.