New $100k art prize cements Tasmania’s cultural reputation

TASMANIA’S reputation as an arts and cultural hub is set to grow, with a big new art prize to be announced today, the Mercury can reveal.

Curator Amy Jackett is excited to announced Hobart will host a new art award — believed to be Australia’s richest prize for landscape art, worth $100,000. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

TASMANIA’S reputation as an arts and cultural hub is set to grow, with a big new art prize to be announced today, the Mercury can reveal.

The Hadley’s Art Prize will be unveiled at the Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart this morning and will offer what is understood to be the richest prize for landscape art in the world at $100,000.

The Fleurieu Art Prize offered by the University of South Australia had previously been lauded as the world’s richest landscape art prize at $65,000.

Funded by Hadley’s Hotel owner Don Neil, the annual Hobart art prize will be open to Australian artists, with a panel of three national art specialists as judges.

As well as the $100,000 winner, there will also be four highly commended awards and a people’s choice award to be determined by a public vote.

The winner will be announced on July 14, followed by an exhibition of the finalists work.

The winning entry will be added to the permanent art collection at the Hadley’s Gallery, which opened at the historic hotel last month.

The landmark award will become a new cultural tourism drawcard, curator Amy Jackett said.

“Our hope is that the Hadley’s Art Prize, Hobart will help to build Tasmania’s growing reputation as an island of art,” she said.

“Mona and the recent updates at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery have already done great things for the arts culture in Tasmania, not to mention the already thriving local arts communities that exist in our state.”

Acting Premier Jeremy Rockliff said the prize would be one of the biggest of its kind in the world and encouraged Tasmanian artists to submit their work

“It will firmly put Tasmania on the map as a creative hub and it will be one of the biggest developments in the Tasmanian art community since the opening of Mona,” he said.

“Each year, the Hadley’s Art Prize will draw thousands of locals and visitors alike to view the finalists and enjoy Tasmania’s rapidly emerging arts scene.

“It will compliment other midwinter events, such as Dark MOFO and the Festival of Voices and increase our reputation as a cultural tourism hotspot.”

The inaugural award theme will be ‘history and place’, which calls on artists to portray the Australian landscape in way that acknowledges the past.

One of the early landlords of Hadley’s Hotel — John Clay Hadley — was a passionate art collector and during the 1920s and 30s, the 1834-built hotel gained a reputation as a cultural hub as a meeting place for the Art Society of Tasmania.

In 1926, an exhibition of watercolours by Tasmanian landscape painter John Eldershaw was held at Hadleys and his piece ‘Under a Hill’ will be unveiled at the new Hadley’s Gallery today to mark the announcement of the new art prize.

Tasmania also hosts the renowned Glover Prize for landscape art, with a prize of $40,000 each year.