Julie Fragar

Archibald Prize 2025 winner
Julie Fragar
Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene)
oil on canvas
© the artist

Justene Williams is a Brisbane artist who works across different media to produce vibrant amalgamations of video, photography, sculpture and performance.

‘There is nobody like Justene. She thinks big and makes bigger, deploying everything from car bodies to opera singers to make work as fearless and feeling as she is,’ says Julie Fragar, a four-time Archibald finalist.

‘Justene says she learned to use materials in this wild way while growing up around her father’s car wrecking yard in Western Sydney, and in later years, while working in visual merchandising for industrial retail. Her studio back catalogue – some of which is in this painting – is a multiverse of characters and events that confront the relentless weirdness we go through en route to the other side.

‘“Flagship Mother” in the title comes from Justene’s recent endurance performance in New Zealand titled Making do rhymes with poo. It was about the labour of getting by. For Justene, like many women artists, that means the labour of a day job (Justene and I work together at an art school), of making art to deadlines, and the labour (and love) of being a mother.

‘In the lower left of the painting you can see Justene’s daughter Honore looking up at her mum half in awe and half asking if this is what she will have to manage too.’