The 2025 Woollahra Small Sculpture prize, valued at $25,000, has announced its winner, Auckland-based artist, Virginia Leonard. Her work, Glad that you are not here all the time — an urn for unwanted limbs and other things is crafted from clay, pure gold and resin. Her winning piece “channels personal frustrations into a layered form, combining glazed ceramics with resin casting to explore the tensions between opacity and transparency.”
The Special Commendation Award valued at $2,000 has been awarded to Sydney ceramic artist Thomas Mason for his work, Torque, crafted from stoneware, glaze, construction adhesive, epoxy putty and cornice cement. Mason’s piece, “draws on the physics of wave motion and the embodied mechanics of making, with twisted forms reflecting the energy and resistance of clay in process.”
With the Mayor’s Choice Award, valued at $1,000, selected by Mayor of Woollahra Sarah Dixson, awarded to emerging ceramic artist, Alicia Cox for her work, Rack. Cox casts her own body, to “explor[e] the intersections of domesticity, gender and the body as a vessel.”
The 2025 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize exhibition, featuring works by all 54 finalists, are on display at the Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf, until 16 November.
The 2025 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize
Woollahra Gallery
(Sydney/Eora NSW)
28 September—16 November
Suggested Reading
Reframing a Collection
Drawn from the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery’s show Place Makers, reframes the artists—who just happen to be female.
Jo Higgins
Object Lessons with Kyoko Hashimoto
For contemporary jeweller Kyoko Hashimoto, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia marks a shift in her approach to materials and method, with a renewed focus on sustainability.
Steve Dow
Helen Wright: Enduring Transformations
Tasmanian artist Helen Wright’s survey exhibition, Shapeshifting at Queen Victoria and Gallery: Art Gallery at Royal Park, chronicles decades of practice across mediums to reveal new meanings.
Briony Downes
Lionel Fogarty’s Poetry in Motion
In the paintings of Yugambeh poet and artist Lionel Fogarty, dynamic words spill across the canvas and suggest a new way of reading, writing and approaching poetry in his new solo show, Burraloupoo at Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney.
Timmah Ball
Farrago 100 years: Protecting Print Publishing
Farrago, the University of Melbourne’s student union newspaper-turned-magazine celebrates a hundred years of publication. At a time when print publishing in the arts is under increasing pressure, The George Paton Gallery is exhibiting ‘Farrago 100 Years’, celebrating the editorial legacy and design innovation of the periodical.
Andrew Stephens
Raquel Caballero’s portal to the World of Oz
In her solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Raquel Caballero imagines L Frank Baum’s wonderful world of Oz in full, glittering technicolour.