Alec Baker’s Ngura (Country) (2019) has won the $15,000 Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, one of Victoria’s significant annual prizes for painting.
The judging panel – Louise Tegart, Director, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ryan Johnston, Head of Academic Programs, Museums and Collections, University of Melbourne, and Joanna Bosse, Bayside Gallery Curator – celebrated the work’s complexity and optical richness.
‘His layered, energetic composition is visually captivating, and the work’s radiant colour palette evokes the vibrancy of his desert country,’ Bosse said. Baker is an Elder and respected Tjilpi of Indulkana and the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands.

Alec Baker, Ngura (Country), 2019, acrylic on linen, 112 x 198cm. Courtesy the artist and Iwantja Arts, Indulkana, South Australia
The $3,000 Local Art Prize was awarded to Michelle Zuccolo for Habitat (2020), an unsettling work that raises questions about interactions between introduced and native species. Habitat’s strange and ambitious composition contrasts with the artist’s delicate application of paint, creating an uneasy tension that engages both the eye and the mind.’

Michelle Zuccolo, Habitat 2020, oil on canvas. Courtesy the artist
The Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize 2020/21 finalist exhibition continues at Bayside Gallery until 4 July 2021; visitors are invited to vote for the People’s Choice Award worth $1,000.
The Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize 2020/21 finalists are Benjamin Aitken, Karima Baadilla, Alec Baker, Max Berry, Alison Binks, David Brian, Magda Cebokli, Ash Coates, Brett Colquhoun, Jarryd Cooper, Emma Coulter, Marcel Cousins, Noni Drew, Emily Ferretti, Martin George, Bob Gibson, Julia Gorman, Simon Grennan, Rose Anna Hamnes, Euan Heng, Kez Hughes, Tracey Jones, Linda Judge, Dena Kahan, Belem Lett, Travis MacDonald, Tim McMonagle, Betty Muffler, Sally M Nangala Mulda, Ivan Namirrkki, Saffron Newey, David Ralph, Anna Rowbury, Brad Rusbridge, Bryan Spier, Darren Wardle, Alice Wormald, and Michelle Zuccolo; their works on show at Bayside Gallery until 4 July 2021.