Self-taught artist Sean Layh has won this year's Packing Room Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

The $2,100 award is given by gallery staff who pick their favorite work from the entries for the Archibald Prize for portrait painting.

Layh's painting shows Australian actor Jacob Collins as Hamlet and was inspired by the artist seeing him play Shakespeare's tragic hero in a production in Melbourne.

The painting will now be considered, along with 58 others, for the Archibald Prize itself after being whittled down from 1,034 entries.

The winner will be announced on May 8.

The number of looted artworks and archaeological artifacts put on display in Rome after being returned to Italy from the United States in a joint project between law enforcement in both countries over six months.

1 - The Helen Frankenthaler show opening today at Gagosian's West 21st Street gallery in New York coincides with the show of her work at Kunstmuseum Basel which is the largest exhibition of her art to date in Europe. More than 20 of her largest works are in the Gagosian show arranged by decade allowing visitors to trace the progress of her career from 1960 to 1992.

2 - Dominic Chambers' show The Body Shimmer, which opens today in Lehmann Maupin's Seoul gallery, is his first solo exhibition in South Korea. It features new paintings as well as a collection of essays and poems by the artist which the gallery describes as an attempt to "further articulate the ideas informing this new body of work".

3 - Allison Katz's new show, Outta the Bag, brings her back to New York 20 years after moving to the city to study. The show, at Hauser & Wirth's Wooster Street gallery, includes her new work First Impression which frames a view of the inaugural 1929 exhibition at the city's Museum of Modern Art within a wide-open mouth.

1 - British singer Jarvis Cocker and his wife, photography agent Kim Sion, are curating a show at the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in northern England next year. The show, which is set to open in May 2027, is expected to feature work by artists including Jeremy Deller, Peter Doig, Barbara Hepworth and Agnes Pelton.

2 - Hedwig Fijen, the founding director of the Manifesta biennial, is stepping down this year after more than three decades in charge. She will be replaced by Emilia van Lynden and Catherine Nichols who will take charge of the nomadic event from October.

3 - Italy's Ministry of Culture has sent a team of inspectors to the headquarters of the Venice Biennale to examine the paperwork around the Russian pavilion. The presence of the Russians for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine has caused controversy with the European Commission threatening to pull its funding and Italy's culture minister Alessandro Giuli refusing to attend preview events at the biennale.

4 - A statue bearing the signature of street artist Banksy has appeared in central London. The work depicting a man marching while carrying a flag that obscures his face is in the St James’s area of Westminster. He has not yet confirmed whether it is his work.