National Works on Paper 2026

The National Works on Paper prize at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery this year turns fifty-three. It was originally the brainchild of Alan McCulloch, a mercurial figure in the Melbourne art scene for more than half a century, who set up the Spring Festival of Drawing in 1973 and a Print Acquisitive in 1974. According to McCulloch, the purpose was to build up an art collection for the Mornington gallery despite modest means. Also because drawing and printmaking “occupied top priority in [McCulloch’s] studies and art practice.” At the time, he quoted Constantin Brancusi: “Art is always at a beginning.”

The competition has morphed into a biennial $20,000 acquisitive prize for works on paper that enjoys national acclaim. In 2026, it attracted 932 entries from across Australia from whom the sixty-eight finalists were selected. This year’s prize was judged by Anne Ryan from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, two highly respected artists, Teho Ropeyarn and Raymond Arnold, plus Rebecca Owens from the Mornington gallery.

While it is almost mandatory in all major prize competitions to say how high was the quality and how difficult was the judging process, this year’s National Works on Paper prize did assemble an exceptionally strong field, where any one work from up to a score of artists could have been announced as a perfectly respectable winner. It is also gratifying to see that the judging jury does not appear to have been ideologically driven in their choice and awarded the acquisitive prize to a beautifully executed conventional watercolour drawing by the Victorian artist from the Macedon Ranges, Adam Lee, You are the wind, I am the song, 2025. Executed on a considerable scale, the work was intended as a lament for the death of three friends.

The $5,000 Emerging Artist Award went to Tasmanian-based artist Emma Bingham for her sprawling suite of a hundred drawings, Holding pattern, 2025.

The wonderful thing about art competitions is that each visitor is also a judge. For me, the outstanding piece was Lesley Duxbury’s Net zero, 2026, the large and profoundly moving treescape spread over forty-eight sheets with half of the image created on carbon paper and half on carbonless copy paper. It is a work about loss and fragility, not simply didactically spelt out, but magically revealed to the viewer in the form of a visual revelation.

The other very powerful piece is Rosie Weiss’s wonderfully evocative ink drawing What lies beneath (self portrait), 2025, where there is a power and defiance in the hand-held twig. There is a simplicity of means that stems from decades of practice. Other outstanding pieces, for me, included Alethea Richter’s Filtered light X, 2025, an amazingly effective hand woven multi-layered screenprint and Brian Robinson’s now familiar large-scale vinylcuts, this one titled Cursed be the ground for our sake. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth, for us, for out of the ground we were taken from the dust that we are, and to the dust we shall return, 2024.

Other stand out pieces include works by Euan Heng, Louise Forthun, Martin King, Matthew Clarke, Robert Hague, and Winsome Jobling.

Works on paper is taken as a very broad-church definition to include digital photography by Nathanael Edwards – Elephant in the room, 2024 – as well as Louise Forthun’s amazing floating paper sculptures – Red + Mauve, 2024. There is also a whole array of graphic techniques and printmaking technologies on display. It is a visually exciting exhibition and has become one of the highly anticipated highlights on the national arts calendar.

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Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA works nationally and internationally as an art historian, art critic, and curator.

 

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
Until 22 November 2026
Victoria

Originally published in print – Art Almanac, November 2026 issue, pp. 38–48