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This week’s winners
Shortlisted and finalists
This week’s opportunities
Awards:
Now in their sixth year, the Danger Awards continue to honour books featuring Australia as a setting for stories about crime and justice. Three awards will be presented at BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival in November 2023: one for crime fiction, one for crime non-fiction and, for the first time, thanks to the sponsorship of OverDrive Australia, a People’s Choice covering both categories.
Entries close 10 June; learn more and enter.
Dedicated to uncovering the hottest new scripts and writing talent across Australia, the Monte Miller Awards are a purpose-built and industry-recognised opportunity for Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) Associate and Student members to have their work showcased directly to industry decision-makers. The Monte Miller Awards are open to screen and stage writers with an unproduced script of any genre across film, television, theatre, audio and interactive media. The winning writers in both categories will receive $5000 in prize money, and their scripts will be made eligible for AWG’s Pathways Showcase.
Entries close 13 June; learn more and enter.
Entries are open for the Wyndham Art Prize with the chance to win the $15,000 major award, the $5000 Local Emerging Artist Prize (LEAP) and the $2500 People’s Choice Award. The 2023 Wyndham Art Prize exhibition will be held from 17 August to 22 October 2023. All mediums are accepted.
Entries close 16 June; learn more and enter.
Waste to Art Wollondilly Exhibition and Competition (NSW)
Waste to Art Wollondilly Exhibition and Competition is an opportunity for creative community members and professional artists from the Southern Tablelands Arts region to exhibit work made from materials that otherwise could end up in landfill. Waste to Art Wollondilly inspires everyone to think differently about waste and overconsumption through creative thinking. The Waste to Art program also includes creative workshops for schools and for the public at Wollondilly Shire Hall. Three prizes are on offer in the Open Category, with prizes also for the youth (12-17 years) and junior (7-11 years) categories.
Entries close 26 June; learn more and enter.
Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence
The Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence offers a major acquisitive prize of $7000, offered by Ceramic Arts Queensland (CAQ) this year. The Siliceous Award is a recognition and celebration of artistic excellence and innovation in ceramics, pottery and ceramic sculpture, and welcomes entrants from around Australia. The 2023 Award will be judged by Dr Rebecca Coates, curator and former Director of Shepparton Art Museum.
Applications close 25 August; learn more and apply.
Callouts:
World + Event (Vic)
World + is a series of conversations, development and in-person events aiming to reimagine and reconceptualise the notion of ‘battles’ within the street dance culture based in Melbourne, curated by Next Wave Producer in Residence MaggZ. A three-hour participatory movement showing, World + Event will be held at Brunswick Mechanics on Saturday 3 June at 7pm, inviting all to join or witness the journey.
Bookings required.
Show Your WEST-SIDE (Vic)
Local Footscray artist LaDY MoHaWK is producing a new public art exhibition titled Show Your WEST-SIDE, which invites other artists to exhibit works that interpret the theme of living in Footscray and the inner west of Melbourne. Local visual artists of all ages are welcome. Seven prizes, including two student prizes, are also offered to celebrate artistic practices in the vibrant community.
Applications close 16 June; learn more and apply.
Professional development:
Ripple: Disability and Culturally Diverse Internship Program (NSW and ACT)
This program is a partnership between Accessible Arts, Diversity Arts Australia, and a range of arts and cultural organisations across NSW and the ACT to provide professional internship opportunities for up to eight people with disability or who are d/Deaf, and also identify as culturally and linguistically diverse. This includes those who identify as people of colour, Black people, and people from migrant and refugee backgrounds. The interns will be supported with access and diversity training and then undertake work experience with leading arts organisations over a 12-week period. The selected interns will be paid $30 per hour, plus 10.5% superannuation, for a total of 20 weeks (including training and work experience hours)
Applications close 5 June; learn more and apply.
2023 Grant McLennan Fellowship (Qld)
Funded by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and presented by QMusic, the $15,000 songwriting award offers rising Queensland musicians the opportunity to travel to New York, London or Berlin to be immersed in a vibrant and foreign culture to further develop their own artistic skills. Individual songwriters or songwriting duos over the age of 21 are eligible to enter.
Entries close 22 June; learn more and enter.
Contemporary Art Tasmania (CAT) Curatorial Mentorship (Tas)
The CAT Curatorial Mentorship supports an early-career Tasmanian curator in a mentorship program that engages industry access, project development and public presentation. Collegial and flexible, each program is led initially by the curator and their artistic focus, with institutional support provided through CAT, invited industry professionals and institutions. CAT will provide early-career curators with a participation fee of $4032 plus superannuation, and with further support through a customised mentorship program.
Applications close 26 June; 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:
The Harbour Trust has commissioned Dennis Golding to create three artworks at Sub Base Platypus in North Sydney on Cammeraygal Country. The new artworks will recognise and celebrate Country and culture as part of the Torpedo Factory Renewal project at the site. Golding is a Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist from the north-west of NSW and was born and raised on Gadigal land. Through his artistic and curatorial practice, Golding aims to present powerful representations of contemporary Aboriginal cultural identity that inform narratives of history and lived experiences. Golding says: ‘I am thrilled to have been selected for this project and I can’t wait to share the finished product with the community. The new artwork will activate the space, connect the building to its natural surrounds and give new life to the retired base.’ This is the first time the Harbour Trust has commissioned a First Nations artist to create a site-specific work.
Read: Winner of prestigious 2023 Ramsay Art Prize announced
The UTS Artist in Residence from June 2023 to June 2024 is Claudia Nicholson. Nicholson will work with University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Associate Professor Cherine Fahd to develop new material photographic outcomes, and with Dr Marivic Wyndham to examine the politics of memorialisation in the Latin America region. The residency culminates in the public presentation of new work at UTS Gallery in 2024. Nicholson’s practice examines psychic and physical connections to place through multidisciplinary forms of art-making including painting, installation, performance and moving image. This year she will also present a new digital commission for Shortwave with the Sydney Opera House. Find out more.
Performing arts:
Writer, director and Quandamooka man, Wesley Enoch has been awarded Sydney Theatre Company’s Patrick White Playwrights Fellowship. With a celebrated career of over 30 years, Enoch is both a previous winner of the Patrick White Playwrights Award and a former STC Resident Director. He says: ‘Patrick White wrote in his will his desire to support Indigenous causes through his eventual gifting to NAISDA (National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association) and the Aboriginal Education Council of NSW. This giant of Australian literature knew the power of storytelling and knew Indigenous causes needed more stories to be told to educate and celebrate. This year we will be asked to vote on a referendum that will further acknowledge our Voice. Writing has the potential to live beyond us and assist in an intergenerational conversation of where we came from and what we wished for.’ The annual $25,000 Fellowship includes a commission from STC, which each Fellow develops during their year-long engagement.
Also announced is Melbourne-based playwright Aran Thangaratnam as recipient of the 2023 Patrick White Playwrights Award for his play love MAD GLITCH. With complexity and plenty of humour, love MAD GLITCH explores parental expectations and control within a second-generation Sri Lankan family, the unrealistic notions of love and marriage, and our ever-evolving relationship with technology and artificial intelligence. Thangaratnam says: ‘It makes me feel so excited about the state of Australian theatre that a silly sci-fi comedy about second-generation Sri Lankan Tamils grappling with AI can be awarded a prize as prestigious as this one. And though I’m clearly terrified at the future of artificial intelligence technology, I can’t wait to see what the future of theatre holds, and the shows Sydney Theatre Company programs in its upcoming seasons.’
The 40th anniversary event of the Green Room Awards was recently held at The Capitol in Melbourne, celebrating outstanding live performances for the period 1 January to 31 December 2022. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Yentl, Paradise Lost and IPHIS each took out four awards, while Moulin Rouge! The Musical and Geraldine Quinn’s BROAD scored three each.
A Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Stephen Page AO and a Technical Achievement Award was given to Jason Lehane. Recipients awarded for their performances included David Wenham, Eryn Jean Norvill, Queenie van de Zandt, Catherine Foster, Warwick Fyfe, Francine Cain, Juan Jackson and Johanna Allen.
Other notable Green Room wins included Glenn Shea’s An Indigenous Trilogy – Act 1: Three Magpies Perched in a Tree presented by The Storyteller in association with La Mama for Best New Writing in Independent Theatre. Also named for Best Production alongside Paradise Lost was Gene Tree: Listen. Now. Again, presented by St Martins Youth Arts Centre in association with Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
Writing and publishing:
US-born and Perth-based writer Katherine Allum has received the 2023 Fogarty Literary Award with a $20,000 cash prize from the Fogarty Foundation and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press. Allum’s winning manuscript The Skeleton House is set in a small town in the Nevada desert, where readers follow the journey of Meg – married with two kids – as her desire for autonomy and freedom resurfaces alongside a secret from the past. Allum’s manuscript is now scheduled for publication in 2024, while shortlisted writers Prema Arasu, Josh Kemp, Patrick Marlborough, Karleah Olson and Emily Paull will work with publisher Georgia Richter and Cate Sutherland to further develop their manuscripts. The Fogarty Literary Award is for Western Australian writers aged 18 to 35. Find out more.
The 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Book of the Year was awarded to Nagi Maehashi for her debut cookbook RecipeTin Eats: Dinner. The book is celebrated for its hugely successful marketing campaign and named a ‘global publishing phenomenon’ in the Awards press release. Each of the 150 recipes in RecipeTin Eats: Dinner comes with a QR code link to an online video tutorial. Maehashi also takes into consideration budget and nutrition to maximise the accessibility of her recipes. Women once again dominated this year’s ABIAs, taking the book award categories of Biography, Older Children’s Book, General Fiction, Non-Fiction, Illustrated Book, International Book, Literary Fiction, Small Publishers’ Children’s Book, Picture Book, New Writer, Commissioning Editor and, of course, Book of the Year.
All:
ANAT Synapse brings artists and scientists together in research partnerships that generate new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Participating in this year’s two collaborative projects are Alicia Sometimes and Professor Tamara Davis (University of Queensland), and Ross Manning, Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska and Dr Anna Tweeddale (Queensland University of Technology).
Astro-Poetic Compositions is a collaboration between prominent astrophysicist Professor Tamara Davis (AM) and artist Alicia Sometimes, which explores distance, mapping, composition and the measurement of the universe through the practices of language and symbolism. This collaboration seeks to understand how language both constructs and impedes scientific knowledge. In Aerosol, Manning, Morawska and Tweeddale will creatively explore how art may provoke new thinking about living in, and interacting with, buildings and their indoor atmospheres. Informed by state-of-the-art science and technologies for monitoring air quality, as well as ventilating/filtrating indoor environment, Aerosol will produce DIY experiments in kinetic, immersive and interactive art. Read more about ANAT Synapse Residencies.
In similar news, the Australia Council has announced recipients of this year’s Marten Bequest Scholarships, each worth $50,000. The scholarships offer talented young artists the chance to explore, study and develop their artistic gifts through travelling interstate and/or overseas. The seven scholarship recipients are: Eliza Scott, Dylan Phillips, Victor Arul, Jessie Nash, Emily Stewart, Rafeil Ismail and Jeremy Boulton. Their respective disciplines span poetry, acting, ballet, singing, painting and more.
Also announced are the Dal Stivens Literary Award and Kathleen Mitchell Literary Award recipients. Jumaana Abdu took out the Dal Stivens award with the short fiction piece The Long Supper, and Dylin Hardcastle was awarded the Kathleen Mitchell award for their forthcoming novel A Language of Limbs. Find out more on the scholarship and award winners.
Musician, activist and Kamilaroi elder Bob Weatherall and award-winning artist and Wardandi Elder Sandra Hill are among the recipients of the 2023 First Nations Arts and Culture Awards. The two eminent artists were awarded the prestigious Red Ochre Award for outstanding lifetime achievement in the arts and their contribution to the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts culture and community, both nationally and internationally. The awards were announced during an event broadcast by National Indigenous Television (NITV) on 27 May. Phoebe Grainer and Naarah Barnes took out the Dreaming Award for young First Nations artists; and Dean Brady and Emily Wells were the recipients of the First Nations Emerging Career Development Award. In addition, Yalanji singer-songwriter Deline Briscoe received the First Nations Arts and Culture Fellowship.
The awards also recognise three further exceptional artists who have received Australia Council Fellowships: Merindi Schrieber (Australia Council Fellowship for Community Arts and Cultural Development), Leah Purcell AM (Australia Council Fellowship for Literature) and Dr Peta Clancy (Australia Council Fellowship for Visual Arts). Find out more.
Shortlisted and finalists
Forty-four finalists will be exhibiting their work at this year’s HIDDEN Rookwood Sculptures Exhibition across three categories: Sculpture Arts, Schools and Stonemasons. Each selected artwork responded to the theme, exploring Rookwood’s contemporary relevance, diverse cultural practices, historical significance, celebration of life, personal stories, or the evocative sense of place, contemplation, history, cycle of life, death, grief, mourning, love and remembrance. HIDDEN 2023 will run from 21 October to 19 November at Rookwood Cemetery, NSW. View more information on HIDDEN 2023.
A total of 72 finalists have been selected for this year’s Olive Cotton Award for photographic portraiture. The works will be exhibited at Tweed Regional Gallery from 14 July to 24 September 2023. Among the finalists’ are portraits of notable artists Wendy Sharpe, Jude Rae, William Yang, Blak Douglas and the late Madeline Preston and John Olsen AO OBE. The selection also includes portraits of respected cultural figures from writer George Haddad to journalist Mervyn Bishop, politician Linda Burney and academics Marcia Langton and Dr Todd Fernando. Regional photographers are widely represented in the Olive Cotton Award with Jaka Adamic, Paul Blackmore, Aaron Chapman, Kristopher Cook, Luther Cora, Katherine Cordwell, Danielle Edwards, Jenny Fraser, Natalie Grono, Nikky Morgan-Smith, Cassandra Scott-Finn, Craig Tuffin and Chelle Wallace among the finalists. The artists are vying for a $20,000 award for the overall winner – to be announced at the awards night on 15 July from 5 pm. The announcement will be live-streamed on the Gallery’s Instagram channel.
Check out previous Opportunities and Awards wraps for more announcements.
