Marcia Macmillan, Whimsical warrior. Overall winner, Head On Landscape Prize, 2020.
Nick Moir, Run. Runner up, Head On Landscape Prize, 2020.
Paul Carruthers, Cheddar Gorge – Horseshoe Bend. Runner up, Head On Landscape Prize, 2020.
Jon Frank, Yuendumu, Northern Territory, 2019. Runner up, Head On Portrait Prize, 2020.
Jouk Oosterhof, Egbert. Runner up, Head On Portrait Prize, 2020.
Alice Tasker, Bagel. Head On student prize 2020.
Joel Parkinson, Within without. Head On student prize 2020.
Lewis Dobbin, Snow trails. Head On student prize, 2020.
The 2020 Head On Photo Festival is currently taking place online. And winners of the annual awards for photographs in portrait, landscape and student categories were announced on 1 May.
The 2020 Portrait Prize was awarded to Fiona Wolf-Symeonides for The gift. Runner-up awards were given to Australian photographer and filmmaker Jon Frank and Dutch photographer Jouk Oosterhof.
Australian Marcia Macmillan took out the 2020 Landscape Prize with her Whimsical warrior. The Australian runner-up award went to Nick Moir and English photographer Paul Carruthers was honoured with the international runner-up prize.
Joel Parkinson, Alice Tasker and Lewis Dobbin all received prizes in the student category which is open to students K-12.
This year the prizes were judged anonymously by a panel of photographers, editors and industry professionals.
Festival director and founder Moshe Rosenzveig OAM said, “The Head On Photo Awards are at the centre of our festival and showcase incredible talent from professionals and amateurs alike. The judges and I have been blown away by the high standard of this year’s submissions… We look forward to sharing the winners and 2020 program with our international community.”
The digital Head On Festival, which features artist talks, panel discussions, Webinars, and 110 exhibitions, is on from 1-17 May.
In his debut solo exhibition Extinguishing Hope, now showing at UTS Gallery, Akil Ahamat uses darkness—both literal and metaphorical—to examine what can be gained when everything is lost.
Existing in the space between ritual, performance and ceremony, the body-centred work of Latai Taumoepeau rewrites the stories that shape our perception of Oceania—while using ancient traditions to tackle our most urgent modern concerns. Taumoepeau is now participating in Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania at Artspace.
Congratulations to Aisha Sherman-Noth, who has won the 2025 Glover Prize for Weeping birches on the avenue. The Tasmanian-based artist wins $80,000 for the painting, which depicts weeping birch and poplar trees along the Brooker Highway into Hobart.
From Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin to Lindy Lee and Paul Knight, an exhibition at Ipswich Art Gallery uses the expanded field of abstraction to encourage deliberate and slow looking.
Carol Jerrems’ intimate and revealing portraits of women, now showing at the National Portrait Gallery, are a touchstone for a generation of writers and photographers. For Josephine Mead, they also galvanise the power—and limits—of feminist legacy five decades on.
Material concerns such as housing can determine an artist’s wellbeing and sense of possibility—an idea that is often overlooked by romantic ideas of art making that are out of sync with our current reality. How can artists navigate a society in which reliable shelter is elusive? And can art itself help us reimagine what it means to achieve secure footing in an increasingly volatile world? Jo Higgins investigates.
