This List of Australian art awards covers the main art awards given by organisations based in Australia. Most are for Australian art but some are open to artists from elsewhere.
Award | Sponsor | Notes |
---|---|---|
Archibald Prize | Art Gallery of New South Wales | First major prize for portraiture in Australian art |
Australian Photographic Portrait Prize | Art Gallery of New South Wales | Discontinued in 2007 |
Bald Archy Prize | Museum of the Riverina, Wagga Wagga | Parody of the Archibald Prize |
Blake Prize | Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre | Focus on spiritual arts |
Bowness Photography Prize | Monash Gallery of Art | |
Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship | Art Gallery of New South Wales | Includes three-month residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris |
the churchie emerging art prize | Institute of Modern Art | Since 1987; formerly at Griffith University Art Gallery (now Museum) |
Clemenger Contemporary Art Award | Art Gallery of New South Wales | 1993-2009 (no longer awarded) |
Cornell Prize | Cornell family | South Australia, from 1951 to 1965 |
Dobell Prize | Art Gallery of New South Wales | No longer awarded |
Doug Moran National Portrait Prize | Doug Moran | Annual Australian portrait prize |
Fleurieu Art Prize | South Australia wineries | Named for the Fleurieu Peninsula |
Fremantle Print Award | Little Creatures Brewery | |
Gallipoli Art Prize [1] | Gallipoli Memorial Club | Acquisitive art prize commemorating the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War, awarded annually. |
Glover Prize | John Glover Society | For paintings of the landscape of Tasmania |
Gold Coast Art Prize | Gold Coast City Art Gallery | |
Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award | Helen Lempriere Bequest | Defunct since 2009 |
Helena Rubinstein Portrait Prize | Helena Rubinstein Foundation) | no longer awarded |
Helpmann Awards | Live Performance Australia | For live entertainment and performing arts |
Impact Awards | Performing Arts Connections Australia | Presenter/venue & Producer Awards (Performing Arts) |
John Fries Award | Copyright Agency | Emerging visual artists |
Kennedy Prize [2] | Kennedy Arts Foundation | Annual Australian arts award of $25,000 |
Kilgour Prize [3] | Newcastle Art Gallery [4] | $50,000 figurative and portrait art competition |
The Ledger Awards | Named after pioneering Australian cartoonist Peter Ledger (1945–1994) | |
Mandorla Art Award | New Norcia Monastery Museum and Art Gallery | Christian art |
John McCaughey Prize | National Gallery of Victoria Art Gallery of New South Wales | 1957– |
Melrose Prize | South Australian Society of Arts | Prize for portraiture instituted in 1921 |
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Works on Paper Award | Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery | Contemporary art made on, or with, paper |
Mosman Art Prize | Mosman Town Council | |
Muswellbrook Art Prize | Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre | |
National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award | Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory | |
National Capital Art Prize | ACT | Prizes in four categories: Open, First Nations, Landscape and Student [5] |
National New Media Art Award | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane | |
National Photographic Portrait Prize | National Portrait Gallery (Canberra) | |
Portia Geach Memorial Award | The Trust Company, Perpetual | Prize for Australian female portraitists |
Ramsay Art Prize | Art Gallery of South Australia | $100,000 prize for contemporary artists under 40 years old |
Ranamok Glass Prize | Andy Plummer and Maureen Cahill | Defunct from 2015 |
Salon des Refusés (Archibald) | S.H. Ervin Gallery | Rejected submissions to the Archibald Prize |
Sculpture by the Sea | Sculpture by the Sea | |
Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards | Sidney Myer Fund | |
Sir John Sulman Prize | Art Gallery of New South Wales | |
Solar art prize | Royal Society of the Arts, South Australia | Climate change themes |
South Australian Ruby Awards | Government of South Australia | Named for Dame Ruby Litchfield |
Stanley Award | Australian Cartoonists' Association | Annual comics award |
Stencil Art Prize | Marrickville Council etc. | Includes international stencil artists |
Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize | South Australian Museum | For art with a science theme |
Wynne Prize | Art Gallery of New South Wales | Landscape painting or figure sculpture art prize |
Albert Namatjira was an Arrernte painter from the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia, widely considered one of the most notable Australian artists. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, he was arguably one of the most famous Indigenous Australians of his generation. He was the first Aboriginal artist to receive popularity from a wide Australian audience.
The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919. It is administered by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and awarded for "the best portrait, preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics, painted by an artist resident in Australia during the twelve months preceding the date fixed by the trustees for sending in the pictures". The Archibald Prize has been awarded annually since 1921 and since July 2015 the prize has been AU$100,000.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued at A$60,000.
Ravenswood School for Girls is an independent, Uniting Church, day and boarding school for Prep to Year 12 girls, situated in Gordon, an Upper North Shore suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
The Blake Prize, formerly the Blake Prize for Religious Art, is an Australian art prize awarded for art that explores spirituality. Since the inaugural prize in 1951, the prize was awarded annually from 1951 to 2015, and since 2016 has been awarded biennially.
The Bald Archy is an Australian art prize, which parodies the prestigious portraiture award, the Archibald Prize. It usually includes cartoons or humorous works making fun of Australian celebrities.
The Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, formerly the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, is a biennial competition for artists, with a science theme, organised by the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, South Australia.
The Matthijs Vermeulen Award is the most important Dutch composition prize. It was named after the Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen (1888–1967).
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians, that is, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon. The movement spawned widespread interest across rural and remote Aboriginal Australia in creating art, while contemporary Indigenous art of a different nature also emerged in urban centres; together they have become central to Australian art. Indigenous art centres have fostered the emergence of the contemporary art movement, and as of 2010 were estimated to represent over 5000 artists, mostly in Australia's north and west.
Luke Cornish is an Australian stencil artist, also known as E.L.K. In 2012 Cornish became the first stencil artist to become a finalist in the Archibald Prize. He was also awarded the Holding Redlich People's Choice Award at the Archibald Prize Salon des Refusés in 2017, the Churchill Fellowship in 2013 and was a finalist in the Sulman prize in the same year. In 2011, he was a finalist in the Metro Art Prize, won the Australian Stencil Art prize in 2010, and in 2008 he won the most popular stencil at Melbourne Stencil Festival. In 2012, Cornish's short film, 'Me- We', which documented the process and construction of his portrait of Father Bob Maguire for entry into the 2012 Archibald Prize, was shortlisted in the Tropfest Awards Film Festival. Other notable achievements include being selected for 2012's Project 5 charity auction, a large involvement in 2011's Outpost Project. Cornish has exhibited his work in capital and regional cities in Australia, and in major international cultural centres, including Paris, London, Rome, Los Angeles and Amsterdam.
The Islamic Museum of Australia (IMA) is a community museum in Thornbury, Melbourne, Australia. It began as a not-for-profit foundation founded in May 2010 with the purpose of establishing the first Islamic museum in Australia. It aims to showcase the artistic heritage and historical contributions of Muslims in Australia and abroad through the display of artworks and historical artefacts.
The Canberra Times is a daily newspaper in Canberra, Australia, which is published by Australian Community Media. It was founded in 1926, and has changed ownership and format several times.
Chris Walrus Dalzell is an Australian artist from Canberra who has gained fame for: a style he calls Spiraleyes; his contributions to Art, Not Apart and various other art projects; and his Spider Web Street Art, which he paints in public places on a clear wall of pallet wrap stretched between street poles.
Nicholas Christopher Milton is an Australian conductor and violinist.
Melissa Beowulf is an Australian artist, specialising in portraiture. She grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to Canberra in the late 1980s, later working between both Woollahra and Canberra.
Waratah Lahy is an artist and art teacher based in Canberra, Australia.
Robert Stewart Bell was an Australian artist and arts curator, best known for his focus on decorative arts. He also worked as an artist in ceramics and textiles.
Heather B. Swann is an Australian contemporary artist known for her expressive surrealist sculptural objects, often combined with installation, performance and drawings. Her work draws on artisanal traditions, carving, modelling and tailoring materials to stretch, twist and manipulate her creaturely forms that are at once whimsical and darkly ambiguous. She has received numerous recognition for her work, and her pieces are held in prominent collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Dubbo Regional Gallery and the Ian Potter Museum of Art.
" My work is a way of holding on to the world. My sculptures and drawings are figurative and modernist in expression, with curved forms, an insistent use of black and a marked surrealist accent."
The Gallipoli Art Prize is an Australian acquisitive art prize that celebrates the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War, awarded annually by the Gallipoli Memorial Club and worth A$20,000.