Kathrin Longhurst has won the Packing Room prize for Archibald 2021 Art Gallery NSW. The artwork ‘Kate’ (Oil on Linen, 122 x 122cm) is a portrait of Kate Ceberano, Australia’s queen of entertainment with 28 albums over 40 years and Top 10 albums across 5 decades.
“Well known for her portraits of beautiful, scantily clad women in military attire, draped with symbols of communist propaganda.”
Kathrin Longhurst was born in communist East Germany. A classically trained figurative painter, she began attending life drawing classes at the age of fourteen. When she was just fifteen, her family escaped from ‘behind the iron curtain’, relocating to Sweden. This jarring transition from a totalitarian regime to a democracy sparked Kathrin’s passion for exploring the concepts of freedom of speech and expression, concepts that continue to thread through her work today.