Congratulations to Zoe Grey, who has won the $100,000 Hadley’s Art Prize for her work The Shape of Rock.
The 28-year-old Tasmanian-based artist works mostly in paint, as well as drawing, collage and ceramics. The Shape of Rock depicts the rugged landscape of Marrawah—a remote coastal community on the northwest side of Tasmania, where Grey grew up.
“Winning this prize is a huge honour, a surprise and a great privilege,” says Grey. “I’m interested in exploring personal relationships to place, and how we engage with the environment around us. This painting, The Shape of Rock is inspired by my evolving relationship with the landscape of my home, Marrawah.”
Grey’s work was selected out of 35 finalists by judges Tina Baum, curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the National Gallery of Australia; Jane Devery, senior curator of exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; and Dr Neil Haddon, associate head of art at the University of Tasmania.
Of the winning work, the judging panel said: “Grey’s The Shape of Rock is a very confident work which draws you in with its rich colours and varied mark-making. There is much to discover as you move around the work and different elements reveal themselves. It’s oceanic and energetic. The composition is well resolved, and the work offers an immersion in the landscape which parallels the artist’s experience of her hometown, Marrawah, a small coastal town in the northwest coast of lutruwita/Tasmania.”
The finalists exhibition is now showing at Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart, and runs until 25 August.
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