by Shane Sody

The five judges for the Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize will face a difficult task during February, determining which, of hundreds of entries, will be exhibited as finalists from 24 March.

In the final hours before entries closed at 8pm on Tuesday 31 January, entries were still pouring in.

At the time of writing this post, it was not clear whether or not the 2023 Park Lands Art Prize would surpass the record field of 360 entries in the previous (2020-21) Art Prize, but the field was expected to easily exceed 300 entries. [UPDATE: 1 February: Final number of entries: 462, a record field]

In 2023, the biennial Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize has inspired artists from not just Adelaide, but also from much further away. Dozens of art works have been submitted to the judges from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia and international submissions from Europe and USA.

There is a wide variety of artwork media represented among the entries: not just oil and acrylic painting (on materials including canvas, perspex, and plywood) but also entries of hand-coloured linocut, stitched embroidery, sculptures in bronze, in glass, and in clay/wood/wire, along with photographs and mosaic tiles, among others.

We can’t show you any of the full images yet, because the judges need to see them fresh, without pre-publicity to cloud their initial impressions.

Nevertheless, we’ve given you on this page a sneak peak at excerpts (“detail”) from 24 entries selected at random from among the hundreds of submissions we’ve received.

Chair of the Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize Committee, Nataliya Dikovskaya says this year's prize is shaping up to be the most exciting and diverse yet.

“We’re excited to see the creativity and artistry of the entries and look forward to seeing the finalist entries on display.

“The Adelaide Park Lands Association focusses on our biennial Art Prize as the core of our goal to ‘Inspire’.

“We’re delighted to have so many talented artists who are both inspired to create and poised to inspire others with their work celebrating the beauty and diversity of your Adelaide Park Lands.”

What happens next?

Our judges have two separate tasks. The first is to select finalists, whose works will be on public display at the Adelaide Festival Centre from 24 March to 7 May.

The judges will select between 70 to 80 works as finalists. During this process, they will not be informed of the artist’s identity. The judges will assess entries solely on the basis of the digital image provided by the artist, the stated dimensions, the artist's category (be it emerging, young artist or First Nations) and the artist's statement about the work. 

The artists selected as finalists will then be contacted individually and invited to send or bring their artwork in to the Festival Centre, on a day shortly before the exhibition opening.

The judges will inspect all finalists, in person at the Festival Centre, and make their choices of prize-winners.

Then, at an invitation-only opening on 24 March, the prize-winners will be announced. The exhibition will continue at the Festival Centre until 7 May. All artworks on display at the exhibition will be available for sale.

The total prize pool is $50,000. The prizes are:

• First Prize: $20,000

• Young Artist (under 25): $2,000

• School Student: $2,000

• Digital Category Prize: $2,000

• Emerging Artist: $2,000

• People’s Choice: $2,000

• Photography Prize: $2,000

• First Nations Artist: $2,000

• Judges Commendations: eight prizes of $2,000 each