How does it feel to win a $20,000 Art Prize?
by Rosemary Warmington, AM, Chair of the 2025 Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize
In any one’s terms, $20,000 is a very good prize!
It’s the firsr prize in the 2025 Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize - a prize that each entering artist has the chance to win.
John Foubister with his winning artwork, at the Adelaide Festival Centre in 2023
It could be you.
So, why is entering this Art Prize such a good choice amongst other options for an artist?
An artist can take hours to months to create an art work. Once a work is created. the questions become:
What are all my choices to show my work?
Where shall I show it ?
How do I get art collectors to see it?
Who will buy it?
You can display your work on a personal website, but you have to get traffic to your site.
There are also overcrowded commercial website galleries, decreasing numbers of professional galleries, community art group shows, expensive art fairs, artist self-hosted exhibitions in paid-for galleries and even the corner cafe.
All have their advantages and disadvantages. But how many do you do?
Then there is the option of entering the 2025 Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize for a mere $50.
Terms and conditions apply of course, but all media, all age groups and all level of artists are eligible to enter.
All entries are judged for the main prize of $20,000, as well as any of the artist-selected categories, each of which carries prize money of $2,500.
$2,500 category prizes are offered for: Multimedia (including digital art and photography), School Student, First Nations (sponsored by Mount Horrocks Wines), People's Choice (sponsored by the Royal Adelaide Show Society), Three-dimensional (i.e. sculptures, craft etc), Artist Living with a Disability (sponsored by Minda), and Emerging Artist.
On top of that there is also the chance for all entries to be considered for a Judges Commendation prize.
The 2025 Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize is non acquisitive. That means the artist continues to own their painting, even if they win one of the prizes.
The prestigious Opening Event at the Adelaide Festival Theatre when all of the finalists’ works are shown in an amazing curated exhibition is the final highlight . All the works in the exhibition are for sale and remain on show for one month, to be seen by crowds of theatre goers and art lovers.
Up to 80 art works are chosen for the finalist exhibition. Based on last year’s figures there is a 27% chance of being a finalist. Not bad, and the sales commission is 30% - less than most commercial galleries .
In all consideration, entering is $50 well spent and that’s just the practicalities of applying. Let’s not forget the increased long term recognition of the artist and their work that comes from winning.
How did it feel to win?
In 2023 John Foubister was a surprise winner of the Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize, with a painting called “The nobility of rocks and sticks. Life on the ground”.
This winning entry was described by the judges as:
“a quietly commanding work, its seemingly simple composition opens up to reveal a subtly modulated palette and masterful brushwork. The painting follows an ethos of close and slow looking – honing in on small, often overlooked details. The humble sticks and stones are arranged in a way that imbues them with a talismanic quality. This painting has come from careful observation of the environment and distils decades of artistic practice - it asks us to contemplate the nobility of nature."
Last week, I asked John Foubister what that 2023 win had meant to him and his art practice.
“Winning the Park Lands Art Prize had many benefits” he told me.
“The selection panel included a highly regarded artist with many years experience, and respected industry people also with many years experience. Having my work selected from over four hundred entries by a panel who know the art world, and are continually looking at artworks and considering their merit, was a reassuring vote of confidence in what I am doing. The making of my paintings mostly happens in isolation. I am often unsure of the direction and value of the results.
“The prize money provided the opportunity to purchase materials without the usual concerns about the household budget. And more broadly it was an unexpected, extremely valuable contribution to our always constrained financial circumstances, and provided some respite from those stresses.
“The exposure my work, and the win, received through the media attention organised by the volunteers working on the Park Lands Art Prize, introduced a new audience to my art work. It raised my professional profile to a degree that I hadn’t anticipated happening.’
John Foubister in his Goolwa studio
“Since the win I’ve been busy, [with]:
“Solo exhibitions :
2023 ‘Parts of a place’ Adelaide Central Gallery
2023& 24 Maunsell Wickes Gallery Sydney
“Group Exhibitions :
2023 ‘Chthonic’ SASA Gallery Uni SA
2024 ‘Of Water, Rock Coral and Pearl’ SCRAC Goolwa
2024 the little machine Adelaide
2024 Finalist, Fleurieu Art Prize
2024 ‘half a thing’ South Seas Trading Port Elliot
2024 ‘Riposte’ SCRAC Goolwa
2024 Finalist, Heysen Landscape Prize Hahndorf Academy”
A previous entry by John Foubister, one of the finalists in the 2020 Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize: “Noisy Birds Near Quiet Flowers”
Submit an entry
Submit your entry here: https://parklandsart.org/adelaide-park-lands-art-prize-2025-entry-form/
Entries close 31 January 2025.
Top pic: John Foubister receiving his first prize certificate from Lord Mayor, Jane Lomax Smith in March 2023.