Congratulations to Adriane STRAMPP and John BOKOR, who have each been selected as finalists in the 2026 Muswellbrook Art Prize, on display until May 23, 2026.
Exhibition Dates: March 19 – May 23, 2026
Exhibition Launch Event and Announcement of Winners: 4pm 21 March 2026
Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre: 1-3 Bridge Street, Muswellbrook NSW 2333
Open Monday-Saturday – 10:00am – 4:00pm
From Muswellbrook’s Website:
‘Since 1958, the Muswellbrook Art Prize has grown and evolved and is today one of the richest prizes for painting in regional Australia. Finalists for the Muswellbrook Art Prize vie for a total of $70,000 prize money across three prize categories: Painting ($50,000 acquisitive), Works on Paper ($10,000 acquisitive), and Ceramics ($10,000 acquisitive).
Astute adjudication of the Prize over the years has yielded an excellent collection of modern and contemporary Australian paintings, works on paper and ceramics from the Post War period of the 20th Century and into the 21st Century, with the winning acquisitive works forming the nucleus of what is now known as the Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection. Previous winners of the Muswellbrook Art Prize include such key figures as David Aspden, Sydney Ball, Richard Larter and Fred Williams. The Upper Hunter Region is also well represented with a number of local artists being successful in winning the Prize including Peter Atkins, Dale Frank, Lyn Nash and Hanna Kay.
Along with Muswellbrook Shire Council, who since 1958 has acted as sponsor and administrator of the Muswellbrook Art Prize, Bengalla Mining Company has generously sponsored the Prize for over 30 years, their commitment ensuring the development of the Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection.’
Adriane’s artist statement:
Evening Garden, 2025, oil on linen,122 x 122 cm, framed.
Evening Garden takes my mother’s garden in Somerset as subject and metaphor: a cultivated terrain shaped by decades of care, loss, and renewal. Below the coastal moors, concealed benches, tended roses, and stone markers record domestic and emotional labour. In dialogue with Vita Sackville-West’s ‘The Garden’, the work treats landscape as an active archive in which growth and decay register memory, and material traces stand in for absent bodies.
John’s artist statement:
Away From it All, 2025, oil on hardboard, 120 x 140 cm, framed
My paintings are created over a long period of time from many different source materials. I like to use brushes, palette knives and an airbrush to render detail. They feel like small worlds to me when I’m making them.
