Zoe Grey Wins AU$100,000 Hadley’s Art Prize

Zoe Greyhas been named the winner of the 2024 Hadley’s Art Prize. Established in 2017 with the intent of drawing attention to Tasmanian arts and culture and restoring art to the walls of Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart, the city’s oldest hotel, the AU$100,000 (US$65,000) acquisitive prize is awarded annually to an Australian landscape artist. It is one of the country’s most lucrative honors and its largest for landscape art. Grey, who lives and works in Hobart and had previously been shortlisted twice for the award, won over thirty-four artists for her paintingThe Shape of Rock, 2024, which depicts the rugged coast near her hometown of Marrawah, Tasmania.

The prize jury this year comprised Tina Baum, senior curator of First Nations art at the National Gallery of Australia; Jane Devery, senior curator of exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; and Neil Haddon, British Australian artist and associate head of art at the University of Tasmania.

“[Grey’s painting is] a very confident work which draws you in with its rich colors and varied mark-making,” said the judging panel in a statement. “There is much to discover as you move around the work and different elements reveal themselves. It’s oceanic and energetic. The composition is well resolved, and the work offers an immersion in the landscape which parallels the artist’s experience of her hometown, Marrawah, a small coastal town in the northwest coast of lutruwita/Tasmania.”

“Winning this prize is a huge honor, a surprise and a great privilege,” said Grey in a statement. “I’m interested in exploring personal relationships to place, and how we engage with the environment around us. This painting, The Shape of Rock is inspired by my evolving relationship with the landscape of my home.”

Grey also won Hadley’s AU$1,000 Packing Room Prize. The AU$10,000 Residency Prize went to Laura Patterson, of Queensland, for her painting Original Shadows, Kooparoona Niara (Mountains of the Spirits) / Mole Creek Tasmania. Grey’s and Patterson’s work will be on view alongside that of the other finalists August 3–25 at Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart.