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This week’s opportunities
Awards and competitions
Summer Small Works Award 2024 (Vic)
The new Caelene nee Glen Gallery welcomes submissions to its first annual Summer Small Works Award, inviting artists to respond to the theme of ‘connection to Earth’. A first prize of $1000 is on offer with 11 runner-up prizes $100 each. The award exhibition will run from 26 November 2024 to 5 January 2025 with all artworks for sale and proceeds going to artists.
Applications close 20 October; learn more and apply.
Call-outs
Country to Couture (NT)
Applications are now open for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, designers and collaborators to have their collections be part of the 10th Country to Couture showcase on Larrakia Country in 2025. The signature Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair (DAAF) Foundation has been growing since launching in 2016, helping spotlight First Nations fashion and design talent.
Applications close 28 October; learn more and apply.
Professional development
2025 Vermont Studio Centre Residencies (US)
Vermont Studio Centre is inviting artists and writers from around the world to apply for two-, three- and four-week residencies, nestled in the rural village of Johnson, Vermont, US. Artists and writers have 24/7 access to private studios and facilities to support their practices: a print shop and a sculpture shop for metal, wood and ceramics. Accomodations include private rooms in shared lodging with common spaces and kitchenettes. All residents receive partial fellowships and 34% receive full fellowships.
Applications close 15 October; learn more and apply.
Shotgun 11 (Tas)
Shotgun is a Contemporary Art Tasmania (CAT) development program providing industry access, critical engagement and the opportunity to create new work through production assistance. Selected Shotgun 11 artists will receive $6000 participation fee plus superannuation, materials allowance and further investment in a customised development program.
Applications close 21 October; learn more and apply.
New Works (ACT)
Canberra Theatre Centre is seeking EOIs from performance makers in the ACT region. The New Works program supports the development of original live performance works in the journey towards presentation. Two Creative Development opportunities will provide a total project budget of up to $10,000 per development.
EOIs close 28 October; learn more and apply.
The Seed Fund Future Makers Management Workshop (NSW)
Created by artists for artists, The Seed Management Workshop is designed as a way for the community to share resources and impart wisdom to managers and self-managed artists who are starting out their careers in the music industry. The Seed Management Workshop will be held in regional NSW in mid-2025.
Applications close 12 November; learn more and apply.
Want more? Visit our Opportunities page for more open competitions, prizes, EOIs and call-outs.
This week’s winners
Visual arts
Winners of the 2024 Victorian Museums and Galleries Awards have been announced and they include the Ballarat Tramway Museum, National Wool Museum, Melbourne Holocaust Museum and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). Linda Sproul, who dedicated 28 years to Museums Victoria, and Dr Megan Evans were awarded Lifetime Achievement awards, while Laura Miles, Manager at Museum and Historical Services, Victoria Police Museum was recognised as Change-Maker of the Year. A nod was given to the valuable volunteers at arts and cultural institutions, with Peter Ball at Bendigo Soldiers Memorial Institute taking out Volunteer of the Year and Jim Barton at Australian Gliding Museum being Highly Commended. Exhibition projects including We the Makers (National Wool Museum), Nightshifts at Buxton Contemporary (University of Melbourne) and Between Waves (ACCA) won top accolades in the organisation categories.
Three sculptors have been awarded the Helen Lempriere Scholarship as part of Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2024. Senior artist Justene Williams took home $35,000, while $30,000 was awarded to mid-career artist Jennifer Cochrane and $25,000 to emerging artist Joel Adler. The Helen Lempriere Scholarships were established in 2010 to support Australian artists to advance their knowledge and skills through travel, study and the purchase of important studio equipment, while supporting their inclusion in Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi. Williams has been practising for 30 years and her large-scale live works are inspired by the aesthetics and ideologies of 20th century modernism, her personal life, pop culture and dreams. She will undertake research trips to Japan and Europe, and will exhibit The Glittering Principle, a large striding figure comprising found objects, at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi this year. Perth-based artist Cochrane continues an ongoing series of self-portraits and intends to use the scholarship to upgrade her workshop and purchase new tools. Meanwhile, Adler, an artist and industrial designer, will embark on a three-week artist residency in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi will run from 18 October to 4 November 2024.
Sydney College of the Arts graduates Leigh Rigozzi and Szymon Dorabialski have been awarded a combined total of $40,000 as recipients of the 2024 Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarship, a prize that supports mid-career and emerging artists to develop their practice through travel. Rigozzi received the mid-career/established scholarship for his series of paintings, The Complete Works of Pieter Bruegel, 2022-2024. Each piece adapts a painting or print by 16th century Flemish artist, Pieter Bruegel, with scenes including a version of Rigozzi and depicting the Lutruwitan/Tasmanian landscape where he lives. Rigozzi will use the scholarship to embark on a viewing tour of the main collections of Bruegel paintings held at museums in Belgium, Italy and Spain. Dorabialski received the emerging artist scholarship for his sculptural installation, Fallen From Grace, Hungover From Divine, 2024. Using materials such as cedar, glass, copper and LED, Dorabialski explores the meaning of symbols in Slavic culture. He plans to embark on a residency to Poland to connect with his Slavic heritage. The finalist exhibition is on view at SCA Gallery until 2 November.
Ana Iti has won Aotearoa New Zealand’s national contemporary art prize, the Walters Prize for A resilient heart like the mānawa (2024). The sculptural and sonic installation was selected for “the radicality of its manifestation”, said international judge, Professor Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. He continued, “Stripped to the bare minimum, the work shares something in common with great poetry: the ability of accessing multiple universes through the availability of a few words.” Iti is of Te Rarawa descent and currently lives and works in Te Matau-a-Māui/Hawkes Bay. Find out more.
UK artist Sally Baldwin has taken out the major win at this year’s Paper on Skin international wearable paper art award. Over 30 finalists from 11 countries were vying for the top prize. Baldwin’s piece After the bushfires – Regeneration was inspired by her 2020 residency in Bilpin, NSW. The work reflects how some of the most blackened and burnt trees started sprouting fresh new growth as a display of resilience. Apart from Baldwin, Dior Mahnken, Kaori Kato, Fides Linien, Lorenz Cherry, Derek Voorpostel, Prue Corlette, Elżbieta Cios-Jonas, and Darryl Bedford also took out category awards, with the Cocoon Designs Public Vote Award to be announced at the conclusion of the exhibition at paranaple arts centre in Devonport, Tasmania.
Amanda Penrose Hart has won the Calleen Art Award, selected from 48 finalists and a field of 254 entries. Shepherd’s Lookout (2023) is a painting depicting a still landscape in the Brindabella Range, around 10 minutes out from Canberra. The judges said, “Amanda Penrose Hart is one of Australia’s most successful and senior plein air painters, having exhibited for over 30 years… Amanda was initially drawn to this landscape as it was where the great Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne, who lived at nearby Stromlo, sourced many of the materials for her works. As such, Amanda has an affinity with this artist and the landscape.” Penrose receives $30,000 in prize money courtesy of the Calleen Trust and the work will join the Calleen Collection at the Cowra Regional Art Gallery. The finalists’ exhibition is on view until 17 November.
Performing arts
Actor Russell Dykstra has been awarded a fellowship from the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) for his embodiment of transformative roles in the Australian entertainment industry. Dykstra graduated from UniSQ with a Diploma of Creative Arts in 1987 and furthered his studies at the School of Jacques Lecoq in Paris and Ecole Philippe Gaulier in London. In 1997, Dykstra produced his one-person show, Children of the Devil and by 1999 made his first feature film debut in Soft Fruit, which landed him his first Australian Film Industry Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (1999) and a Film Critics’ Circle Award nomination (2000). Dykstra appeared in critically acclaimed films such as Ned Kelly (2003), Romulus, My Father (2006), theatre productions like The Addams Family (2013), The Lion King (2014) and most recently in television series such as Rake (2018) and Ladies in Black (2024).
Read: Trent Dalton becomes an Honorary Fellow at University of Southern Queensland
Writing and publishing
Sweatshop has announced Murrawarri hip hop artist, DOBBY, and Wiradjuri writer, Luca Sawyer as winners of The Hage Award for First Nations Writers. The prize includes $5000.00 in financial support for each winner, as well as a year-long mentorship with First Nations authors, Tony Birch and Melissa Lucashenko. A Highly Commended award, funded by Diversity Arts Australia, was given to Warrimay, Birribi poet, Nicole Smede and Gumbaynggirr, Barunggam, Birri Gubba writer, Waverley Stanley Jnr. Each receives $1000 in financial support and a residency to continue developing their work with Sweatshop Literacy Movement.
Poet and author Christine Paice has won $10,000 in the Australian Catholic University (ACU) Prize for Poetry for a poem about the death of her mother. Paice was in the final stages of writing her new book, a mystery novel inspired by the 2012 discovery of King Richard III’s body under a car park, when her mother died. ‘Gabriel in the Playing Fields’ describes the final months of her mother’s life, followed by a supernatural imagined moment when a giant barefoot angel carries her into the afterlife. Paice explains, “It’s really normal for me to express one of the biggest events in my family history, the death of my mum, in a poem… I can’t think that this life is all the life that we have. I love the idea that there is something else that carries on. How it works we don’t really know, but I like exploring that as much as I can while being on the other side of it.” The second prize of $5000 is being awarded to first-time entrant Carolyn Leach-Paholski for a poem on the perils of climate change from the perspective of her husband’s childhood and their eventual marriage. Poet and fiction writer, Jo Gardiner, has taken out the $3000 third prize for a poem that illustrates faith amid trials and tribulations.
Creative Australia will invest over $1.6 million to support 10 projects through the Regional Performing Arts Touring program (Playing Australia), including performances set to tour across 79 locations and regional and remote communities. The Australian Dance Theatre will embark on its national tour of Marrow, while Opera Queensland stages a two-month national tour of Are You Lonesome Tonight. Woodfordia Inc will bring its Festival of Small Halls to communities in rural Tasmania, while The Threshold Centre will bring its digital theatre experience, Glow, to parents and carers of newborns in regional Australia. Find out more.
All
Arts & Cultural Exchange (ACE) has announced Wiradjuri and Dunghutti visual artist Natalie Snedden and Gamilaroi singer-songwriter Elina Roberts-Turner as the latest emerging talents to join ACE’s Artist in Residence program. Under the residency program, which nurtures emerging Western Sydney-based First Nations talent, the artists will receive resources, mentorship, and a platform to develop their craft and share their stories with the wider community, all under the guidance of experts in the arts and cultural industry. Snedden is a Wiradjuri and Dunghutti visual artist and the creator of BALANDA, a celebratory collection of paintings reflecting her deep connection to family and Country. Singer-songwriter Roberts-Turner is currently recording her debut EP and her residency will conclude with an exclusive industry event preview in western Sydney.
Shortlisted and finalists
The Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues has announced the finalists selected to compete in this year’s saxophone prize for the National Jazz Awards on 2 November as part of the Festival. Contestants include Michael Avgenicos, Jayden Blockley, Oscar Bruten, Stephen Byth, Ben Lerner and Tessie Overmyer. First prize includes a $7500 cash prize and a recording session at Pughouse studios.
Nominees for the 2024 Screen Music Awards feature a mix of 32 first-time nominees and seasoned screen composers across 15 categories. The nominated music and original songs are featured in some of Australia’s favourite screen moments of the past year, including homegrown animated phenomenon Bluey. Appearing in Best Music for Children’s Programming and Most Performed Composer – Overseas (Joff Bush), Bluey, is currently the most-watched show in the US so far this year. The Feature Film Score of the Year nominees include two-time previous winner, Jed Kurzel, for original music composed for Dev Patel’s action thriller Monkey Man. The new Emerging Screen Composers of the Year category features Alex Olijnyk, Ayda Akbal, James Mountain and Luna Pan. View the full list of nominees.
The ARA Historical Novel Prize has announced its 2024 shortlist for the $100,000 Adult Prize and the $50,000 Children and Young Adult Prize. The Adult shortlist includes The Unearthed by Lenny Bartulin (Allen & Unwin), Tony Birch’s Women & Children (UQP) and Melissa Lukashenko’s Edenglassie (UQP). Meanwhile, Jackie French’s Secret Sparrow (HarperCollins), Rebecca Lim’s Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky (Allen & Unwin) and Beverley McWilliams’ Spies in the Sky (Pantera Press) were selected for the Children and Young Adult shortlist. Winners will be announced at an event at NSW Parliament House on 23 October.
Check out previous Opportunities and Awards wraps for more announcements.
