Image: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Michael Zavros has won the 2026 ANZ People’s Choice award for his portrait of lawyer, author, advocate and media commentator Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, according to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The gallery said the public voted the work as the favourite in a record-breaking year for the award. Zavros is a seven-time Archibald Prize finalist.
The winning painting, ‘Alex with his tefillin in the sea’, is a large-scale hyperrealist oil on canvas showing Ryvchin standing in the sea and wearing tefillin, a traditional Jewish ritual object. The gallery’s work page identifies the painting as 205.2 x 137.9 cm. Zavros is based in Brisbane.
In the gallery text accompanying the work, Zavros said that his mother thought she saw him on television when she had actually seen Ryvchin, and that later friends made the same observation. He also wrote that after the attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, Ryvchin appeared frequently in the media and spoke about the pain in his community and changes he feared would emerge in Australia. Zavros said a DNA test later showed that, in addition to Greek and Irish heritage, he was also part Ashkenazi Jewish.
The artist said that when he met Ryvchin earlier this year, he knew he wanted to paint him in water, or ‘the sea’, which he described as symbolising many things for Jewish and non-Jewish Australians alike. He said he included tefillin because symbols are important in contemporary culture, and added that symbols are often used to harm people when marking identity. In the email announcement, Zavros said he was ‘deeply honoured’ that visitors connected with the work.
The People’s Choice result sits within the gallery’s annual Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes exhibition, which runs in the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Naala Nura building. The 2026 edition opened on 9 May and is scheduled to close on 16 August. The gallery describes the exhibition as its annual presentation of contemporary Australian painting and sculpture, with the Archibald Prize focused on portraiture, the Wynne Prize on landscape painting and figurative sculpture, and the Sulman Prize on subject painting, genre painting or mural projects.
The gallery’s exhibition pages also note extended hours for the final two weekends, with the exhibition open until 10pm on 8–9 August and 15–16 August, and late-night entry on Wednesday nights during Art After Hours. Related public programmes listed on the site include guided tours, audio-description tours and private group tours of ‘Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026’.
