NEWS
Judith van Heeren is a finalist in the 2026 Maldon Landscape Prize with her work ‘Pink moon’. The 2026 Maldon Landscape Prize, themed “Essence of Place,” is a national art award in Australia presented by the Maldon Artist Network and Cascade Art Gallery, encouraging diverse, inventive interpretations of the landscape. The finalist exhibition runs from September 26 to October 24, 2026, at the Cascade Art Gallery. “Essence of Place” invites artists to capture their personal, figurative, spiritual, impressionistic, or abstract responses to the environment and land. The Prize is generously supported by the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation.
Judith van Heeren is a finalist in the 2026 R & M McGivern Prize with her painting ‘Old Moon’. The R & M McGivern Prize was established by the will of the late Muriel Evelyn McGivern, a local resident and artist of Maroondah, as a legacy of Muriel’s support of the arts in Maroondah. The Prize is awarded every three years by the Trustee for outstanding, original artwork in the medium of painting in oil and watercolour (including gouache). The R & M McGivern Prize is an acquisitive award and the winning artworks will become the property of the Maroondah…
Heidi Yardley is a finalist in the 2026 John Leslie Art Prize at Gippsland Art Gallery with her painting ‘Dark Wood, Dark Water’. One of Australia’s most prestigious prizes for landscape painting, the John Leslie Art Prize consistently attracts the highest calibre of artists from all corners of Australia. Named after the Gallery’s Patron John Leslie OBE (1919–2016), the continuation of this highly sought acquisitive prize is made possible through the generous ongoing support of the Gippsland Art Gallery Foundation. The exhibition of finalists runs from 5 September until 22 November. Judges for the 2026 John Leslie Art Prize are…
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Tonee Messiah is featured on Richard Graham’s podcast ‘Australian Women Artists’. “I think it would be fair to say that Tonee Messiah’s work asks questions of you. It asks that you stand in front and notice how you feel. Her paintings have been described by her as living in the landscape of the mind. Tonee Messiah was born in Israel and spent her childhood moving between a kibbutz and coastal Australia, finally settling in Sydney at eleven. That experience of perpetual transition — of never quite arriving — became the foundation of one of the most quietly original painting practices in the country.…
Gold rush: Berlin-based artist scoops Rocky prize Karla Marchesi’s colourful floral painting style has just won her Queensland’s richest painting prize. Berlin-based Brisbane artist Karla Marchesi has just won Rockhampton Museum of Art’s $50,000 Gold Award. Photo: Dale Grant It is hard to comprehend the impact a major prize can have on an artist. Karla Marchesi, Brisbane-born and now living and working in Berlin, has just won the state’s richest painting prize – the $50,000 Gold Award – for her hyper-colourful and visually decadent paintings. It was not just the financial boost that resonated so strongly for this artist, but…
Congratulations to Karla Marchesi who has been awarded the 2026 Gold Award for her painting ‘Wasted waiting’ at the Rockhampton Museum of Art. Now in its seventh iteration, the biennial Gold Award remains the richest painting prize in Queensland, offering a $50,000 acquisitive award. Named in honour of the late Rockhampton philanthropist Moya Gold, the prize continues her legacy by supporting contemporary Australian artists while enriching Rockhampton Museum of Art’s nationally significant collection. The 2026 prize was judged by eminent Australian artist Jenny Watson, whose influential conceptual painting practice spans more than four decades. The exhibition featuring the invited artists…
Mixing prints with paintings and tapestry, Nicholas Thompson Gallery presents a very tasty show of mid-career work by Alun Leach-Jones (1937-2017). The focus is a 1988 tapestry Revisited Objects which is flanked by the screenprint which it was developed from, and small woven preparatory test samples. Its worth visiting the show just for the opportunity to inspect this stately tapestry close up, and see exactly why the Victorian Tapestry Workshop is so respected internationally. With the original composition interlocking forms were surrounded by a thin Manganese blue line and sat within a Cobalt blue surround, although in the subsequent tapestry these were converted…
Works from Tai Snaith’s ‘Flotilla (there’s no dignity in haste)’ series of slugs have been acquired by the Shepparton Art Museum. The Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) holds the most significant collection of historic and contemporary Australian ceramics in regional Australia. The collection strives to encompass all aspects of ceramic production in Australia and be comprehensive in its representation of major trends, developments and important periods of production. Tai Snaith’s slugs have previously been exhibited with Nicholas Thompson Gallery at Spring 1883 (2025) and Heide Museum of Modern Art (2021). Installation image by @alicehutchison_photography
Judith Van Heeren is exhibited in Groundswell at Castlemaine Art Museum until the 19th of July. In order to effect change, you need a groundswell, a groundswell of opinion, a surge of emotion, a desire for new thinking. This exhibition celebrates artists who want to build a groundswell for change whether that be environmental, cultural, personal or political. This exhibition has evolved from earlier projects celebrating the women who worked together to found the gallery in the early 20th century. Like them, any of the contemporary artists in this exhibition value networks, community connection and participation. Contemporary local artists include: Arkeria Armstrong,…
Antonia Sellbach is exhibited in ‘The Concentric Influences of Sol LeWitt: Foundations, Pivots and Place’, opening at RMIT Gallery on 5 June 2026. Instigated and directed by Dr Irene Barberis (RMIT School of Art), this exhibition emerges from her long-term friendship and mentorship with the esteemed American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. In the 1960s, LeWitt revolutionised the definition of contemporary art by presenting the simple but radical idea that a work of art’s concept is more important than its form. RMIT Gallery is delighted to centre this exhibition around a LeWitt wall drawing; the…
Nicole Kelly is a finalist in the 2026 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with her painting ‘Bird Hour’. “I have visited the arid zone of remote Fowlers Gap Research Station in NSW, 110 kilometres north of Broken Hill, continuously for the past six years. Bird hour is an accumulated response to these visits, celebrating the variety of bird life and visually shifting desert landscape. Reflecting on our binding relationships with the landscape and a love of the land, the painting reveals an ongoing attempt to portray reality in a way that liaises not with literal…
Congratulations to Betra Fraval who has been awarded the acquisitive Beckett Local Prize at the 2026 Bayside Painting Prize with her work ‘Taking flight’. The Bayside Painting Prize is Melbourne’s premier annual painting prize. The finalist exhibition brings together a broad range of artists from across Australia, both established and lesser known, whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of painting in Australia today.