Lynda Draper has won the fifth biennial Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award. The Sydney-based artist took out the $50,000 prize with her 2019 series Somnambulism.

The 2019 prize was judged by Lisa Slade, assistant director artistic programs at the Art Gallery of South Australia; ceramic artist Stephen Benwell; and Rebecca Coates, director of the Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) where the Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award Exhibition is held.

Each of the six finalists – Julie Bartholomew, Stephen Bird, Greg Daly, Lynda Draper, Juz Kitson, and Isadora Vaughan – was invited to present a new major body of work.

“The winning body of work by Lynda Draper, Somnambulism, 2019, is startling in its freshness. The narrative and ambition pushes at the very margins of what we understand clay to be able to do,” said the judges in a joint statement.

“In some respects, the coil form is the most rudimentary of forms. However, Draper extends this rudimentary form into a series of portraits of royal personages that takes our understanding of architecture, space, decoration and form in gravity-defying new directions. These works are both childlike and sophisticated all in the one package.”

The Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award is an acquisitive prize, so Draper’s work will join the Shepparton Art Museum permanent collection.

Works by all of the finalists are on show at SAM until 1 September.

Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award Exhibition
Shepparton Art Museum (SAM)
21 June – 1 September