When Benjamin Law is asked what it's like to sit for a portrait that will eventually be a finalist in the Archibalds, Australia's most lauded art prize, his answer is ... which one?
His image has made it into the awards finals not once but twice, but in two extremely different depictions.
Both are startlingly accurate portrayals of the writer and broadcaster - one raw and emotional, and the other a saucy nude.
Which one shows the real Benjamin Law? The answer is both, and also, why should it matter?
Law will be pondering his own portraits, and many others, when he delivers the Andrew Sayers Memorial Lecture at the National Portrait Gallery this week.
The lecture is named for the gallery's late, great founding director, and someone who well understood the power of letting it all hang out in the name of art.
"The question is a good one - who gets to be painted?" Law mused in the lead-up this week.
"Who is the painter, and why? And when you look at portraits throughout history, portraits are usually sites of power. Who gets to have their portrait painted? Rich people, powerful people, it's about an official narrative of power. But what's interesting about portraits is they're sites of disrupting power as well."
Law has been a regular broadcaster on ABC radio, has written for various Australian publications, been a contestant on Survivor, and published a memoir, adapted for television, The Family Law, of growing up as a gay man in an Asian family on the Sunshine Coast.
He will be referring to the recently unveiled official portrait of King Charles - "which looks like King Charles is bathed in blood" - and the controversy around the depiction of Gina Rinehart by First Nations artist Vincent Namatjira.
"[It's a] got a portrait of power as well, but the power really lies with someone else, and it's Vincent Namatjira and the public's reaction to the work," he says. "So I'm so interested in how power shifts. Because when you ask those questions, who gets to sit? Who gets to paint? They're questions about power. And look, I may bring up my butt in that, my one very powerful butt."
He's referring to 2022 depiction by Jordan Richardson, of Law reclining on a chaise with his back to the viewer. His bare bottom is starkly white against the rest of his naked body - "it had been a very hot summer, I was very bad with skin protection" and, if you lean in, you'll notice that Law is watching you, the viewer, through the mirror positioned in front of his face.
It's a reinterpretation of Diego Velazquez's 17th-century painting The Rokeby Venus and, as Law points out, it's something of a mind game in itself.
"It's not who you expect to be in that pose, it's not the kind of butt you expect to see in that kind of painting, and it's not the kind of portrait you necessarily expect to see the Archibalds, either," he says. "So yeah, we're kind of having our fun poking around with power, too."
The other, earlier work in question, by Brisbane artist Keith Burt, is a far more straightforward head-and-shoulders depiction of Law. But it shows him in an ambiguous state of emotion.
"I was very moved by [this] portrait of me - he painted it when I was in Brisbane for a funeral," Law says. "He caught me in a slightly different mood to what I think the public know of me and and one he captured me faithfully - that's absolutely me, but it was kind of looking at a mirror in a private moment."
All up, it's been an adventure to see himself depicted in what has historically been a conservative depiction of Australian life.
"At least personally, it felt like a turning point in terms of my perception of the Archibald Prize, and by extension, if that's a reflection of Australian society, of what Australian society is and is becoming, too," Law says.
- Benjamin Law will be discussing portraiture for the Andrew Sayers Memorial Lecture at the National Portrait Gallery, July 31 at 6pm. portrait.gov.au.
