Tom Malone Prize 2022

2022 marks the 20th year of the Tom Malone Prize.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia's Tom Malone Prize is a highly respected national event for contemporary Australian glass artists.

It has played an integral role in the Gallery's acquisition of works by Australia's most inspiring, innovative and accomplished artists working with, and sculpting glass.

The Tom Malone Prize was initiated in 2003 by Governor of the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, Elizabeth Malone. The Prize continues in 2018-2022 through the support of Foundation Benefactor, Sheryl Grimwood.

An acquisitive prize, each year’s winning entrant is awarded $15,000 while their work becomes a part of the WA 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, Benjamin Sewell and Ayano Yoshizumi.

The 2022 exhibition features the works of: Ruth Allen (VIC); Chick Butcher (NSW); Matthew Curtis (NSW); Tim Edwards (SA); Wendy Fairclough (SA); Laurie Fossier-Mills (WA); Brenden Scott French (SA); Marcel Hoogstad Hay (SA); Rita Kellaway (SA); Gerry King (SA); Peter Kovacsy (WA); Nick Mount (SA); Jessica Murtagh (SA); Emma Varga (NSW) and Janice Vitkovsky (SA).

These fifteen shortlisted works demonstrate how our nation’s glass artists continue to invent and reinvent, to challenge themselves technically and artistically, and find new frameworks to distil human experience in accessible and enlivening ways.

In celebration of the Tom Malone Prize’s twentieth anniversary, the 2022 finalist works will be shown alongside each winning work across the nineteen years of the Prize. The retrospective works demonstrate the beauty and versatility of glass as a medium moving from the dark humour of Tom Moore, to the calmly meditative work of Jessica Loughlin, to the playful spirit of Nick Mount, to the precarious theatre of Gabriella Bisetto.

The winner of the $15,000 acquisitive prize will be announced 2 June 2022.

Image credits - Wendy Fairclough Study for a landscape 2022. Lead crystal, cast, 29 x 71 x 40 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Photography: Grant Hancock. Rita Kellaway Labyrinthine Xlll 2022. Glass, kiln formed, slumped and sand blasted, 84 x 183 x 3 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Photography: Michael Haines. Gerry King Virtual vessel 2021. Glass, kiln formed and fused, metal base, 41 x 44.5 x 21 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Photography: Grant Hancock. Jessica Murtagh Modern relic X: in this together 2021. Glass, blown, sand blasted and engraved, 46 x 27 x 27 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Photography: Jessica Reagon.