Tim Edwards Announced Winner of Tom Malone Prize for Australian Glass Artists

The Art Gallery of Western Australia has announced Tim Edwards as the winner of the 2022 Tom Malone Prize for Australian glass artists, for his work Ellipse #8.

Ellipse #8 was selected as the winning piece from a competitive short list of fifteen works by Australian artists including: Ruth Allen (VIC); Chick Butcher (NSW); Matthew Curtis (NSW); Tim Edwards (SA); Wendy Fairclough (SA); Laurie Fossier-Mills (WA); Brenden Scott French (SA); Marcel Hoogstad Hay (SA); Rita Kellaway (SA); Gerry King (SA); Peter Kovacsy (WA); Nick Mount (SA); Jessica Murtagh (SA); Emma Varga (NSW); and Janice Vitkovsky (SA).

These fifteen shortlisted works demonstrate how Australia’s glass artists continue to invent and reinvent, challenge themselves artistically and technically, and find new frameworks to distil human experience and artistic creativity, in accessible and enlivening ways.

This year’s judges include internationally renowned artist and educator Giles Bettison, AGWA Foundation Benefactor Sheryl Grimwood, AGWA Foundation Governor Elizabeth Malone, and AGWA Curator of Australian and International Art (post-1970) Robert Cook.

About Edwards’ winning piece, the Judges stated: “In a 15 artist strong shortlisted field this year, Edward’s work Ellipse #8 held its ground calmly and beautifully. It’s a quiet work whose form amplifies Edwards’ command of his craft and his vision. In this regard it is so clearly a work by an artist operating at the very height of his powers. There is nothing arbitrary about it at all; the form is perfectly resolved and intentional. This extends from the vessel’s hip and shoulder shapes, to the balance of colour, to the finish, to the even wall thickness. These elements are cleverly rendered but not for cleverness sake; they do not signal material flair alone. Instead, they are the hard-won vehicle for a meditation on the flows of light, the sensation of perception and being wholly in the world, and the importance of surface in allowing viewers to form an intimate connection between our bodies and that of the object. Employing stone wheel cutting to finish the work, it is a piece that is heavily and gradually laboured yet brilliantly fresh and light. Its quietness is alive and wonderfully of this moment. Naturally, therefore, we could not be happier with Tim taking the place of the winner of the 20th Tom Malone Prize. It is a well-deserved honour.”

In celebration of the Tom Malone Prize’s twentieth anniversary, the 2022 finalist works are being shown alongside winning works across the nineteen years of the Prize. The retrospective works demonstrate the beauty and versatility of glass as a medium; moving from the dark humour of Tom Moore, to the calmly meditative work of Jessica Loughlin, the playful spirit of Nick Mount, and the precarious theatre of Gabriella Bisetto.

Since its inception in 2003, the Tom Malone Prize has developed into a highly respected national event within the Australian glass arts community. Over the past 20 years, it has played an integral role in the Gallery’s acquisition of works by Australia’s most inspiring, innovative and accomplished artists working with, and sculpting glass.

AGWA Curator Robert Cook said, “The Tom Malone Prize has allowed the Gallery to become intimately connected to some of the very best artists at work in this country, many of whom are globally renowned. These artists just happen to make work in glass, a medium that brings together incredibly disparate visionaries, who are all virtuosos in their different ways. Over this twenty-year period, the Prize has allowed us the privilege to represent major high points of their practice into our permanent Collection; the learning we have undertaken through it has also allowed us to acquire outside the award in a daring and informed way.”

“Viewing the 2022 winner and looking across the nineteen years of winners prior, what becomes evident is a consistent commitment to a kind of sculptural form that carries rich and deep emotional content to forge poetic and considered relations to the world around us.”

The Tom Malone Prize was initiated in 2003 by Governor of The Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, Elizabeth Malone. The Prize continues through the support of Foundation Benefactor Sheryl Grimwood.

The free exhibition opens June 3rd at AGWA and runs until 31 July 2022.

Learn more about the Tom Malone Prize and exhibition.