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.

This digital exhibition features works from the exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, which runs from 3 June – 31 July 2022.

Image Credit:

Ruth Allen

Dancing at midnight 2021

Hot formed glass; wood, light, steel metronome; soundscape

25 x 20 x 120 cm (object)

Courtesy of the artist

Photography: Eddy Khayat