This has to be one of my absolute favourite times of the year. You can almost feel the zappiness in the air as artist’s around the country wait to see if their work will be shortlisted for the Archibald, Wynne or Sulman Prize.

I love how it’s so contentious and there’s always a lot of snootiness and declarations of artistic wowserism. I got so excited when I saw the finalists online today, there’s a beautiful suite of work, but does feel a little samey this year. A little safe maybe?

I like this work by Abdul Abdullah, I think the crown is a gutsy touch, it harks back to Basquiat’s famous crowns (see below) but also it’s a reckless assault on your own artwork by Adbul and that has to be commended. It could have gone so horribly wrong. And that’s the joy of doing something risky on your canvases, it either ends in triumph of devastation. Such a knife edge of success and failure.