From Tasmanian cliffs to pig-nosed turtles: $100,000 Hadley’s Art prize – in pictures

Hadley’s Art prize is an annual acquisitive prize for Australian landscape art that is believed to be the richest in the world. Selected from 35 finalists, the Tasmanian-based, 28-year-old artist Zoe Grey has won for The Shape of Rock.

Grey’s winning work encapsulates the rugged landscape of Marrawah, a remote coastal community on the north-west edge of Tasmania where she grew up.

The prize is presented by Hadley’s Orient hotel in Hobart, where all finalists will be exhibited until 25 August. Below is a selection of works

Winner of Hadley’s Art prize 2024: The Shape of Rock by Zoe Grey

Acrylic and oil on canvas. “The wind line comes across the bay, white caps marching. The mountain looms to the east, unwavering. The rocks, the creatures that slip between them, settle, and stay. These moments of the landscape, felt so often through my life on the west coast of lutruwita/Tasmania, are constant. As steady as the sea. But each time I return home, there is something new: folds of preminghana in unusual light; the shine of an empty abalone shell; shapes of rock once hidden.”

Photograph: Zoe Grey/Hadley’s Art prize

By Water Over Time by Harrison Bowe

Oil, enamel and beeswax on canvas. An early career Hobart-based artist, Bowe’s practice encompasses painting, photography and performance. His submission depicts the First Split on Tasmania’s Gordon River, exploring the emotive qualities and contrast of the contorted cliffs and quiet river.

Photograph: Harrison Bowe

Colonial Heat: Paninnher Country, Longford by Amanda Johnson

Polymer acrylic and oil on canvas. This painting “evokes historical anglicisations of Tasmanian country, depicting gorse bush, berry hedgerows and other introduced species”, the artist writes. “The stripped landscape suggests impacts of colonial agriculture. An almost toxic palette signals sunset prettiness, but also alludes to climate change … I suggest that the colonial past is not remote, that inside our colonial continuum, aestheticised landscapes are still purveyed despite devastations of local ecologies.”

Photograph: Amanda Johnson

The Devils Kitchen by Andrew Mezei

Oil on linen. Borrowing techniques from the Dutch Baroque period, and by grinding his own colours, Andrew Mezei creates luminous paintings with fine detail that reflect our connectedness to the world; a metaphysical model of consciousness. In this painting he depicts the striking patterned rock face and inviting ocean from The Devils Kitchen in Tasmania.

Photograph: Andrew Mezei

Nganampa Manta by Robert Fielding

Synthetic polymer paint on linen. Robert Fielding is a contemporary artist of Pakistani, Afghan, Western Arrente and Yankunytjatjara descent, lives in the Mimili community on Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands, in South Australia. Nganampa Manta is an exploration of the ongoing fight of his community to protect their land and maintain their culture, driven by the sacredness of the country.

Photograph: Robert Fielding

Leaving by Joe Whyte

Oil on linen. “Over the past few years, my landscapes have been largely focused on my local suburbs of Brunswick and Coburg in inner-city Melbourne. These old industrial suburbs are the places where I have spent the vast majority of my life. While not always the most beautiful or picturesque, these are the locations that have the most emotional resonance for me. With Leaving, I am using the landscape to reflect on my own life in the area, and how my experiences of happiness and loss are tied so closely with that sense of place.”

Photograph: Joe Whyte

WUUKANTA: Life on the River by Naomi Hobson

Synthetic polymer on linen. Naomi Hobson is a Southern Kaantju/Umpila woman and multi-disciplinary artist who lives in Coen, far north Queensland. Her painting represents the story cycle of the river, a place of cultural importance and nourishment from one generation of the artist’s family to the next.

Photograph: Naomi Hobson

Urrtjanpa by Frank Young

Acrylic on Linen. Frank Young was born near Artuti on the APY lands in 1949. He has been a longtime director of Tjala Arts and supporter of APY art centres. As a young man Frank worked with senior men during the 1970s land rights movement on the APY lands.

Photograph: Frank Young

Cleft Island, Wilson’s Promontory by Tony Lloyd

Oil on linen. Tony Lloyd paints mountain landscapes and endless highways, explores space and nature, all while portraying a timeless and enigmatic world. This painting depicts the rugged, granite Cleft Island, also known as Skull Rock, which is situated to the south-west of Wilsons Promontory in Victoria.

Photograph: Tony Lloyd

Papunya by Charles Inkamala

Acrylic and ink on paper. The Arrernte artist from the Central Desert was born in Ntaria (Hermannsburg), his father’s country. Charles meditates on his home country as he paints significant cultural sites such as Mt Sonder and Glen Helen Gorge and his mother’s country, Papunya. The stylised and bold paintings communicate his strong knowledge of and connection to country.

Photograph: Charles Inkamala

Original Shadows Mole Creek Tasmania by Laura Patterson

Oil on board. Laura Patterson is a figurative expressionist painter and architecture graduate who makes work seeking to synthesise the unique characteristics of a given place.

Photograph: Laura Patterson

St Clair and the Mountain by Katherine Boland

Pigment print from digital composite on recycled aluminium. “In this digitally-crafted work, Saint Clair, an ethereal figure melding seamlessly with landscape, embodies the intersection between nature and technology and the interconnectedness between humanity and the natural world. With her watchful gaze fixed upon the snow-covered Cradle Mountain she is a silent witness to the environmental transformations unfolding across the planet, serving both as an observer and a harbinger of the consequences of our actions.”

Photograph: Katherine Boland

Scotts Peak by Rosie Hastie

Photography. An early career Hobart-based artist and photographer, whose practice delves into the dual nature of threat and illusion within photographic scenes. This photograph is of a constructed recreation of the mountain top in south-west Tasmania, prompting contemplation on the fragility and deceptive permanence of the site.

Photograph: Rosie Hastie

Inma by Zaachariaha Fielding

Acrylic on linen. This Adelaide-based multi-disciplinary artist from the Mimili community on the APY lands, was the winner of the 2023 Wynne prize and one-half of electronic music duo Electric Fields, representing Australia at the 2024 Eurovision song contest. The painting presents Fielding’s community through a childhood lens, recalling observations of inma (song and dance) and movement.

Photograph: Zaachariaha Fielding

6 Pig-nosed Turtles by Kieren Karritpul

Paper collagraphy with painting. “The turtles are caught in a woven net. We walk slowly across our lands to place the net in the river. Then we take them home for food. The land and tracks we walk on have been drawn on the backs of the turtles. My ancestors made these tracks for us hundreds of years ago to teach us how to hunt and catch food. Now the land, our land, is changing. There is less water and the seasons have changed. We are worried about our culture.”

Photograph: Kieren Karritpul

Walawuru ngunytju kukaku ananyi by Iluwanti Ken

Ink and synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Iluwanti Ken (born 1944) is a Pitjantjatjara artist, originally from Watarru and now living in Amata, in the APY lands in South Australia. “I paint the stories of my father’s country – Walawuru Tjukurpa – the story of the eagles. This is my tjukurpa and all of my children’s tjukurpa too.”

Photograph: Iluwanti Ken

Shapes of Space: crab burrow morphology by Meg Walch

Oil painting.Walch is an established Tasmanian artist who engages with the plasticity of painterly mediums to operate between abstraction and figuration. “Lateral mutually supportive networks: subterranean pockets of space increase carbon sequestration.” This painting depicts a plaster mould of an abandoned crab burrow.

Photograph: Meg Walch

West MacDonnell Ranges, Hugh River by Hubert Pareroultja

Watercolour on paper. Hubert Pareroultja is a senior Western Aranda-Luritja man. He grew up watching his uncles the Pareroultja brothers and Albert Namatjira painting. He paints many of the same locations, in particular Hermannsburg, Mt Sonder/Rutjipma and James Range. Hubert lives and works in the Western MacDonnell Ranges to this day.

Photograph: Hubert Pareroultja

Warnarringa sun by Conrad Tipungwuti

Locally sourced ochres on linen. This Tiwi artist grew up in “old camp” Pirlangimpi surrounded by strong culture and ceremony. Later in life he moved to Milikapiti to live with family next to the art centre where he works today. His Tiwi name is Kamilowra and in the practice of his ancestors continues to create work in ochres from country.

Photograph: Conrad Tipungwuti

Shadowlands by Jane Burton

Photography. Jane Burton works in photography, film and more recently painting, exploring mortality, desire and isolation. Burton’s submission Shadowlands depicts the ruin of a late 19th century house lying abandoned and derelict on a rural plain in Victoria.

Photograph: Jane Burton