Mosman Art Gallery has announced artist Mark Maurangi Carrol as the winner of the Mosman Art Prize for his work Blue boat (crowd on the island of Mangaia).
The prize received 1,400 entries from across the country. Justin Paton, head curator of international art at AGNSW was this year’s judge.
As a national acquisitive prize of $70,000, funded by Mosman Council, the Mosman Art Prize celebrates painting’s unique ability to tell stories, capture moments of change, and reflect the complexities of contemporary life.
The prize supports and elevates artists whose work engages with the present moment, while also contributing to the broader history of Australian art, with winning works forming the heart of the Mosman Art Collection, a public collection that traces the trajectory of Australian painting through decades of artistic innovation and expression.
In describing his winning work, Mark Maurangi Carrol said: “This painting reimagines a 1900 photograph taken by Frederick W. Sears on the island of Mangaia, where a crowd observes the government vessel Tutanaekai. In this work, I extract the setting’s conceptual residue but remove the crowd entirely, inserting instead a solitary, contemporary figure (my brother).”
The winning painting will go into the collection and sit alongside such esteemed artists as Cressida Campbell, Lloyd Rees, and Margaret Olley – who was the inaugural winner in 1947.
The Mosman Art Prize offered five further art awards in addition to the acquisitive major prize. Tim Price won the $10,000 Margaret Olley Commendation Award for his work Life’s on Time; while the $5,000 Allan Gamble Award went to Celia Gullet for Variations series VI.
There will be 72 finalists featured in the exhibition this year, which runs from Friday 23 August to Sunday 2 November at the Mosman Art Gallery.
