NSW artist Halinka Orszulok has won the 2018 Glover Prize, Australia’s most prestigious landscape art prize, receiving $50,000 and a bronze maquette of colonial artist and award namesake, John Glover.
Orszulok’s winning work, Ponies, represents night-time environments that are contradictory, ambiguous, and often unacknowledged; like the unhomely home or landscape that belongs to neither nature nor culture.

Halinka Orszulok, Ponies
‘The inspiration for the painting is the playground at the Cataract Gorge in Launceston; an intersection of nature, culture, and history. A natural playground, it echoes romantic ideas about the role of nature and the sublime; and represents a counterpoint to the ills of modern society. It could be said that the complexities of our human-centric and historically entrenched relationship to the natural world are in some way expressed here, and mirror tensions found in the greater landscape of Tasmania,’ Orszulok said.
‘I was interested in visiting and painting the location as it fulfils some important criteria for me. It is a landscape with strong, moody, artificial-light which causes the world to fall into stark contrast, and contains complex, interwoven layers of signification.
‘I found the pretty plastic ponies riding through the verdant Tasmanian forest a particularly evocative image – an introduced species evoking the invasion of this island. They are also symbols with a strong pull on the subconscious. There is a dream-like quality to the image. I have dreamt of riding horses through both familiar and unexpected environments. To me, the ponies represent power, freedom, and escape. The image represents a moment in an open-ended story where the viewer must arrive at their own meaning,’ Orszulok added.

Halinka Orszulok – 2018 Glover Prize winner
The judges for the 2018 Glover Prize are ArtBank Director, Tony Stephens; arts curator, adviser, and advocate, Natalia Ottolenghi Bradshaw; and Director, New Audiences for Art, Dr Jane Deeth.
The Glover Prize is awarded for the work judged the best contemporary landscape painting of Tasmania completed in the previous 12 months. Landscape painting is defined in its broadest sense. The aim is to stimulate conversations about the meaning and possibilities expressed in the words landscape, painting, and Tasmania. The Glover Prize is open to artists from anywhere in the world. This year’s exhibition was held at the historic Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale, Tasmania on 10 to 13 March and continues the following weekend of 17 to 18 March, 2018.