National Photography Prize 2018 Finalists Announced

29 March 2018

Murray Art Museum Albury together with the MAMA Art Foundation is very pleased to announce the finalists for the 2018 National Photography Prize.

Founded in 1983, the MAMA Art Foundation National Photographic Prize is one of Australia’s longest running celebrations of photography, and certainly the medium’s oldest prize.

The acquisitive, biennale award was first staged at Albury Arts Centre, which became the Albury Art Gallery, and is now the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), establishing a strong focus on photography within the museum’s collection.

The 2018 National Photographic Prize offers a $30,000 acquisitive first prize, courtesy of the generous support of the MAMA Art Foundation. In addition, the John & Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship offers $5000 to an outstanding emerging Australian artist.

Since the first daguerreotype was produced in the late 1830s, photography’s relatively short history has been one of flux and change, commercial use and critical distance, institutional acceptance and now complete ubiquity.

In consideration of the medium’s fluid history, artists working across all areas of the photographic field were encouraged to apply for the 2018 National Photographic Prize; extending the artists considered from those working in traditional forms of light based, chemical production through to artists dealing with hybrid and expanded fields of photography and image making.
From an unprecedented number of applications, twelve artists have been selected for the 2018 National Photography Prize.
  • Amanda Williams
  • Caroline Rothwell
  • Ioulia Terizis
  • Izabela Pluta
  • James Farley
  • James Tylor
  • Kieran Butler
  • Lynne Roberts-Goodwin
  • Tim Silver
  • Todd McMillan
  • Tully Arnot
  • Val Wens
Izabela Pluta

Finalist National Photography Prize 2018
Izabela Pluta
Stone (reversal), 2017
pigment prints on vinyl and aluminium 
Image courtesy of the artist

Michael Moran, Curator, Murray Art Museum Albury: “This a selection of artists who not only make photography, but think about photography deeply - the process of constructing images, welding the information of an image to a substrate. Then, what happens to that image in a world of images? Contemporary culture generates and consumes image after image. This group of artists gently ask the audience to slow down and consider the images before them. There seems to be a collective effort to wrangle photography back into a medium with material purpose.”

Tully Arnot

Finalist National Photography Prize 2018
Tully Arnot
Surfaces (1-8), 2016 
Installation view
483 digital photographs, automated Photomerge, automated Content-Aware fill, Giclee print on Hahnemuhle 305gsm photo rag, styrene, tension, assorted mounts.
Image courtesy of the artist 

The 2018 National Photography Prize finalist exhibition will be open to the public from 10 May, with the prize announcement and gala celebration taking place on the evening of Friday, 18 May.

The 2018 National Photography Prize will be awarded by guest judge, Isobel Parker Philip, Curator Photographs, Art Gallery of NSW.