‘We get to hear the stories’: unpacking the Archibald prize at the Art Gallery of NSW

After 40 years working together in the children's literature space, author Libby Hathorn agreed to illustrator Liz Bowring's request to paint her - "as long as you submit it to the Archibald".

The pair arrived Tuesday morning at the loading dock behind the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where the canvas is among the more than 2,000 entries from across the country that will be processed through the gallery's packing room this week.

"I'm pretty excited even just to get here, doesn't matter what happens. I feel such an honour," Hathorn says. "I love what [Bowring] did. I mean, besides making me looking terribly glamorous, she put about 60 or 70 of my book covers in the background - you have to look, but there's this beautiful background collage."

Alexis Wildman, one of the gallery's packing room staff, says the week the processing takes place is "one of those periods where every single person from every nook and cranny comes out of the woodwork - all these artists that are new to the Archibald as well as seasoned veterans."

Judged by the packers, the $3,000 packing room prize is considered just as important as the official Archibald prize, which is worth $100,000 and judged by the trustees of the gallery. While artists have the option to send their work by courier, Wildman says it's the artist who choose to physically walk their painting through the door that give the secondary prize its edge.

"They've gone through this big adventure to get here and deliver their work. And we get to be on the receiving end and see their excitement and nervousness, all the jitters, all the hard work leading up to this moment," Wildman says.

Following the retirement of head packer Brett Cuthbertson, this year is the first year the deciding vote will come down to three packers, including Wildman, instead of solely Cuthbertson.

"I think the advantage we have over say the trustees is that we get to hear the stories and be on the floor with the crew," Wildman says.

Artist Bern Barry arrives shortly before 11am, seven hours after he left his studio in Glenlyon, country Victoria, taking his 33 x 43cm painting in an RM Williams paper bag as aeroplane carry-on.

Entering the competition for the second time, Barry says "it's exciting but also nerve-wracking", and for this reason has told his friends back home his visit to Sydney is for social reasons. Painting is an intensely personal activity for Barry, one he turned to when he got retrenched from his job at age 58, and which he says "saved my life".

Marina Finlay and Karyn Zamel arrive together in Finlay's red Mazda to drop off their respective portraits, more than 30 years after they formed a friendship through painting.

After being selected as an Archibald finalist for her portrait of Finlay in 2018, Zamel says she painted another friend, nuclear medicine physician Dr Monica Rossleigh.

"She's one of those people that people don't know, but she's just helped so many people through cancer and thyroid problems," Zamel says.

Finlay chose to paint Peggy Carter, a makeup artist in the Australian film and theatre scene for over 60 years, who she met in her own "former life" as an actor.

"It helps the competition that they have famous people. But there are a lot of people not necessarily in the public eye, but they've done amazing things," Finlay says.

Finlay believes Oscar Wilde was right when he said any good portrait is more of the artist than of the sitter.

She says she wanted to paint Carter because she "resonated" with her spirit. "So my expression of Peggy is more about her spirit than the shape of her nose."

David Blomfield says carrying in his first entry to the Archibald - a portrait of Aboriginal curator, writer, artist and activist Djon Mundine - is fulfilling a "life goal".

Blomfield says he likes to paint portraits of people with strong characteristics, strong lines or features that he "can evolve into something".

"For example, with Djon Mundine, he has long dreadlocks. So the idea with the hair was the Aboriginal dots going around symbolising the dreadlocks," Blomfield says.

Other well-known faces also arrive on canvases. Ben Ryan brings in a portrait of comedian and YouTuber Natalie Tran in a wooden frame he's carved himself, while David Williams brings in a portrait of his local member of parliament, Julian Leeser.

Alongside the portraits, artists are delivering their landscape paintings and figure sculptures to the Wynne prize, and subject and genre paintings to the Sulman prize.

Peter Strong's entry for the Wynne - a white rhino sculpture made entirely out of broken toys - is transferred on to a dolly from the back of his van.

It's first time Strong has entered the competition since he was fresh out of art school over 25 years ago. The "white rhino trash trophy" is part of his "Toymageddon" series of sculptures, which draw attention to human wastefulness and the extinction crisis.

Gordon Carmichael arrives carrying his entry for the Sulman. He says it's "exciting - you know, it's the big house. I've always dreamed about having my work hanging in the art gallery in New South Wales".

His painting, Deep Seeing in Glen Davis, is about his experience living in the titular locality in the central west for 10 years without electricity.

"Deep seeing is an Indigenous term for looking further or beyond what you're actually seeing, looking deeper into the landscape," Carmichael explains.

"Just before my dad died, he told us that his grandmother was Aboriginal, which was a bit of a surprise. So I don't know whether that's a little bit in my blood, but I'm very connected to the land and to nature. So this is what comes out in my work."

Georgina Chakar's entry, also for the Sulman, is inspired by the words she says to her husband every time they sit down to the news: "The only thing I want is this war [in Ukraine] to stop."

Chakar, who came to Australia many years ago from Macedonia, titled the picture Speak Iwazaru - referencing the Japanese for "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil".

"This painting is about the atomic bomb that was dropped in Hiroshima, which is history, but the fear that it may become our present."

This is Chakar's fifth entry in the competition. She says: "You never know, the hope dies the last!"