Tom Malone Prize 2020

Contemporary artworks to go on show as part of prestigious national glass award

Tom Malone Prize 2020 opens at AGWA Saturday 14 March | FREE

The Art Gallery of WA is pleased to announce the fifteen shortlisted artists for the 2020 Tom Malone Prize for Australian glass artists.

The 2020 prize will bring together many of Australia's best glass artists. The exhibition will feature the work of: Kate Baker (NSW), Clare Belfrage (SA), Peter Bowles (TAS), Lisa Cahill (ACT), Mel Douglas (ACT), Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott (NSW), Hannah Gason (ACT), David Hay (WA), Marc Leib (WA), Jeremy Lepisto (NSW), Jessica Loughlin (SA), Nick Mount (SA), Kirstie Rea (NSW), Jason Sims (SA) and Jarred Wright (QLD).

As an acquisitive prize, the winning work becomes part of the State Art Collection where it will join works by previous winners: Clare Belfrage, Gabriella Bisetto, Charles Butcher, Cobi Cockburn, Brian Corr, Mel Douglas, Mark Eliott, Deirdre Feeney, Kevin Gordon, Marc Leib, Jessica Loughlin, Tom Moore, Nick Mount and Benjamin Sewell.

The Tom Malone Prize is a highly respected national event within the Australian glass arts community and it has played an integral role in the Gallery's acquisition of works by Australia's most inspiring, innovative and accomplished artists working in this medium.

AGWA curator Robert Cook said, "As ever, the Tom Malone Prize represents the best glass work being made in the country today. Mel Douglas’ work looks at how line creates form, and the various ways objects take and reshape the space around them. Jason Sims’ also looks at this but in a different mode. His sculptural work with light and glass fashions a fragmented illusion of an optical infinity, one that our self might become absorbed by and then totally lost within. Nature remains a source of inspiration this year as Benjamin Edols and Kathy Elliot’s work depicts a buoyantly animated changing ocean-scape, and Lisa Cahill’s abstracted landscape conjures an enveloping, semi-liquid space.

"But that’s just the beginning. The fifteen works in the shortlist for 2020 demonstrate how our nation’s glass artists continue to invent, and reinvent, to challenge themselves technically and to find new frameworks to distil human experience in accessible and enlivening ways."

Now in its 18th year, the Tom Malone Prize continues with the support of Ms Sheryl Grimwood, AGWA Foundation Benefactor. The exhibition will be on display at AGWA 14 March – 11 May 2020. The winner of the $15,000 acquisitive prize will be announced on Thursday 19 March 2020.

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