Love the focus for 2024 Mandorla Art Award: Entries now open

26 Oct 2023

By The Record

Mandorla Art Award 2024
The 2014 Mandorla Art Award winning entry by Paul Kaptein Untitled. Photo: Supplied

With a prize pool of over $50,000, Mandorla is Australia’s most significant thematic Christian art prize.

The Mandorla Art Award actively fosters a relationship between contemporary fine artists and the writings of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Open to all artists across Australia, working in any medium, Mandorla invites artists to think laterally and with sensitivity by interpreting a new theme for each iteration of the award.

The 2024 theme is Refocus ‘Let all that you do be done in love’ (1 Cor. 16:14)

Mandorla Art Award Chair Dr Angela McCarthy. Photo: The Record

2024 promises to be Mandorla’s most exciting award yet, with the inclusion of a major new prize category, the New Norcia Artist Residency Prize.

This is a unique opportunity for an artist to live and create artwork in Australia’s only monastic town.

In partnership with the New Norcia Benedictine Monastery, this one-month residency provides a studio, accommodation, meals and a $10,000 artist fee.

Artwork by Mandurah artist, Jos Coufreur, which took out the 2014 People’s Choice Prize. Photo: Supplied.

In 2024, Mandorla will award five prize categories

  • Mandorla Art Award Prize – Acquisitive: $30,000
  • Highly Commended Catholic Archdiocese Prize: $5,000
  • Highly Commended Anglican Diocese Prize: $5,000
  • People’s Choice Prize – provided by Benedictine Community: $2,000
  • New Norcia Artist Residency Prize: 1-month residency and $10,000

Finalist works are selected by an eminent panel of judges and shown in an exhibition in May 2024 at Holmes à Court Gallery in Gooyaman West Perth.

The artwork awarded the Mandorla Art Prize is acquired into the Mandorla Collection, held at the New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery.

The selection panel and judges for the 2024 Mandorla Art Award are, Director of Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, WA Hannah Mathews, Victorian Artist, Richard Lewer and WA Theologian, Dr Raewynne Whiteley.

An entry of the Mandorla Art Award 2016. Photo: The Record

Entries are open from now until Friday 13 March 2024.

Artists can enter via the online entry form. The artwork can be in any medium and must have been produced in the last year and not previously exhibited.

For more information, visit www.mandorlaart.com or email info@mandorlaart.com