James Hunt Bora

This is the first time James Hunt has entered the Archibald Prize but the idea for the portrait came first. Hunt was keen to paint Australian boxer and rugby league player Anthony Mundine ‘because he is someone who has been so outspoken. I wanted to try and bring out the plights he has tried to bring attention to through the media. Obviously that has often caused controversy but I believe his heart is in the right place.’

Hunt began the portrait by painting the Aboriginal flag and then adding layers of white paint to it, which, he says, is ‘partly symbolic of the whiting over of Aboriginal history’. He then added tissue paper, earth and newspaper articles relating to Indigenous Australians, Islam and the terrible events of September 11. ‘I decided after meeting with Anthony to collaborate with Sun Herald photojournalist Simon Alekna to use an enlarged, photocopied newspaper image as a starting point. Blowing it up, the image becomes very pixilated – not unlike Aboriginal dot painting, which seemed the most appropriate way to paint Anthony.’

‘Around the time Anthony changed sport from league to boxing he also began to call himself The Man,’ says Hunt. ‘I called the painting Bora, which is an Indigenous rite in which boys are initiated into manhood. The bora ring is where this initiation takes place. Beside the obvious connections between this and the boxing ring, I stumbled across the fact that the ring created from painting the Aboriginal flag also appears subtly at the centre of the picture underneath the black dots I painted of Anthony’s face. I think it helps frame The Man at the centre of what’s going on in the picture.

‘As the media is the main medium the public has used to formulate fairly negative opinions of The Man, I deliberately chose using a media image to try and portray him in a positive way,’ adds Hunt. ‘Hopefully those people who do hold negative opinions of Anthony are able to at least look at my portrait and still appreciate it for what it is.’

Born in Sydney, Hunt has an honours degree from Sydney College of the Arts.