Kirsty Budge
*Red, white and blur* 2025
oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist

Victoria Reichelt
*Strawberry slippage* 2026
oil on linen
Courtesy of Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane

Anh Do
*Wild white man of Geelong* 2024
oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist

Jonathan Crowther
*An ode to a landscape once forgotten* 2026
oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist

Natasha Bieniek
*Zen* 2025
oil on wood panel
Courtesy of the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

Darren Wardle
*The afterlife of things* 2024
acrylic and oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist

2026 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize

Saturday 7 November 2026 to Sunday 28 February 2027

The 2026 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize is an acquisitive award for contemporary painting. The thirty-six works presented this year were selected from an Australia-wide field of over 500 entries. In representing some of the country’s finest established and emerging artists, this exhibition provides a particular survey of current approaches to subject matter, genres, and stylistic diversity. Painting continues to be one of the most engaging and enduring disciplines in the visual arts, and each of the finalists in this exhibition exemplifies artists’ unique engagement with the material qualities of paint to configure their idiosyncratic visions and observations.

The absence of an overarching prize theme ensures diverse creative responses, and this year these include: the natural world; the built environment; personal and cultural history; observations of the everyday; and explorations of the act of painting itself.

The 2026 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize is generously supported by the Dimmick Foundation. The prize continues a long tradition of acquisitive award exhibitions presented by the Gallery, through which the permanent collection has grown substantially. The first painting prize—the Geelong Centenary Art Competition—was held in 1938, and in the almost 90 years since, the Gallery has awarded acquisitive prizes variously for paintings, watercolours and prints, generously sponsored by various individuals, philanthropic and corporate supporters committed to contemporary art.

The 2026 finalists are Colleen Ahern, Matthew Asling, Natasha Bieniek, Seth Birchall, Elisabeth Bodey, Mairin Briody, Kirsty Budge, Stephen Bush, Ellie Chalmers-Robinson, Samuel Rush Condon, Jonathan Crowther, Hop Dac, Anh Do, Chelsea Gustafsson, Katherine Hattam, Euan Heng, Madeline Kidd, Tony Lloyd, William Mackinnon, Tania Major, Moya McKenna, Jennifer Mills with Darcy Luker, Tully Moore, Jan Murray, Grant Nimmo, Rose Nolan, Jack Paterson, Stieg Persson, Kenny Pittock, Adam Pyett, Victoria Reichelt, Steven Rendall, Anthony Romagnano, Sally Ross, Darren Wardle and Alice Wormald.

The judging panel for the 2026 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize included Humphrey Clegg, Director & CEO, Geelong Gallery; Lauren Ellis, Curatorial Manager, Bendigo Art Gallery; and Lisa Sullivan, Assistant Director, Curatorial, Geelong Gallery.

Winner: 2026 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize

Victoria Reichelt
Strawberry slippage 2026
oil on linen
Winner, 2026 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize
Courtesy of the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane

Artist Statement:
Strawberry slippage, and the series it comes from, represents the pressures and pleasures of parenthood (the multiple cakes that must be constructed yearly) and hints at the rest of the world momentarily pushed to the side, as the busy bookshelves in the background sit untouched, but always in mind. The artwork alludes to the eschewing of a cool minimalist aesthetic, quickly replaced by the maximalist world of kids. The cake floats in a world of soft focus, asserting its absurd decorations and perfectly formed surfaces, with a hint of discord as a rainbow decoration slides from its allocated position.

The world of books (blurred beyond recognition) is in a sense a memory that awaits time to revisit, returning again to the pleasures of reading and stillness, while also cherishing the time devoted to the sweet joys of parenting.