Famous faces dominate Moran prize

Famous faces dominated this year's Moran Portrait prize, with images of film director Baz Luhrmann and cricket legend Steve Waugh taking out the top gongs.

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Famous faces dominated this year's Moran Portrait prize, with images of film director Baz Luhrmann and cricket legend Steve Waugh taking out the top gongs for painting and photography.

Melbourne-based artist Vincent Fantauzzo won the $150,000 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for his painting, Baz Luhrmann `Off Screen'.

Jack Atley was awarded $100,000 for the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize for his work, World Rare Disease Day - Steve Waugh and Sarah Walker.

The prize, now in its 23rd year and the most lucrative in Australia, had more than 122,000 entrants across both categories.

Fantauzzo's large painting pictures the director with his head in his hands.

"Baz comes across as a very confident person and a confident artist ... I got to see him at a time when he is really vulnerable and his guard is down," Fantauzzo said as he accepted the prize at the NSW State Library on Tuesday.

The announcement was followed by a congratulatory video message from the director of Moulin Rouge and Australia.

"I was under incredible creative stress at that time," Luhrmann said from New York.

He said a number of photographs were taken of him, "but of course that would be the image that Vincent chose".

Jack Atley's photograph also captured a famous face in a private moment.

Atley, who formerly worked as a photographer with the Australian cricket side, was taking photographs for the Steve Waugh Foundation, which helps children with rare diseases.

The picture captures Waugh leaning towards three-year-old Sarah Walker with his arms outstretched.

"The picture is really special to me because it shows a (different) picture of Steve Waugh. As we all know he is a legendary Australian cricketer and a hero on the field, but he's a much bigger hero off it," Atley said.

Waugh told reporters the photograph was taken during a private moment with Sarah.

"I just started talking to her and I was showing her a couple (of pictures) on my phone of my dog at home, she started to like that and that was when he took the photo.

"She's an amazing girl, she's dependent on oxygen 24-7 and just an incredible little girl who motivates all (the) people around her."

Atley plans to donate some of the prize money to the foundation and hopes it will raise awareness of rare diseases.

Works on display range from classical portraiture to a multimedia work showing 536 oil paintings in succession.

The Moran Prizes is on at the State Library of NSW until June 26, before touring nationally.

It also includes 30 works from primary schools around Australia.




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