Gosford Art Prize 2026

A record 1,518 entries were received for this year's Gosford Art Prize, with every state and territory in Australia represented. The quantity and quality of entries blew us away, and narrowing the field down to the 147 finalist pieces was a challenge. 

Here are the winners, with brief excerpts from the remarks of judges Dean Cross and Sally Dan-Cuthbert:

$25,000 Acquisitive Major Prize: Alacoque Dash

The Long Goodbye II, 2025

"It is small, sophisticated and deeply personal: a delicate retelling of a personal story of loss through a beautiful and alluring work. What moved us most is how deliberate every part of the making process is, each element drawn from her journey with her mother since childhood."

$10,000 Moving Image Art Award: Esther Carlin

The Ghost of Mr Bawky, 2025

"... it takes an issue art too often leaves unspoken and gives it a face, a home, a family. The filmmaker is three generations into an experience of profound grief, and two generations into the work of trying to understand it."

$10,000 First Nations Artist Prize: Damien Shen

My Cuzzy Nate and the 654 Club, 2025

"... the sheer pleasure of watching art succeed on its own terms.  Shen adapts the narrative card trick devised and popularised in 1930s America, performing the routine before an audience of his own family. The result is unrehearsed, warm and genuinely funny. "

$10,000 Gosford Ceramic Prize: Belinda Piggott

Tides of Renewal, 2019 - 2026  

"Placed into the water after the kiln, tube worms and bryozoans continue the making, forming a natural surface in place of glaze. The sea becomes collaborator. Materiality, process and environment are folded together into one object. "

$1,000 Highly Commended: Harley Gleeson

Still Here, 2026

"... 65,000 years of unbroken connection to Country, one of the longest continuing cultures in the world. That continuity is the work's real subject; the restraint, the discipline, and the sustained looking it demands all follow as consequence."

$1,000 Highly Commended: Tara McIntosh

Someday (we will), 2025

"... its quiet softness asks for more time than a glance affords, and that is its strength... Solitude is embodied in the work rather than explained by it. Material and meaning become the same thing, held in a single suspended surface that appears both protected and exposed."

We invite you to visit the Gallery to vote for your favourite work in the $500 Viewers' Choice Award. 

Featuring a prize pool of $57.500, the exhibition runs from 26 September to 22 November 2026. 

TO SEE THE GOSFORD ART PRIZE 2026 LIST OF FINALISTS CLICK HERE >>> Gosford Art Prize Finalists 2026

Opening and Awards Presentation: Friday 25 September 2026 at 6pm. RSVP at www.trybooking.com/DHYZJ

Gosford Art Pize History

The Gosford Art Prize started as a community-driven project in 1970 and has grown to become one of the highlights of the Gallery’s exhibition calendar and an important part of the cultural landscape of the Central Coast.  The 2026 iteration is the 27th time the prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery.

The Gosford Shire Art Prize began in 1970 as a feature of the first ‘Venetian Carnival’, an arts and tourism event which would later become known as the ‘Festival of the Waters’ held between 1970 to 1986. It was organised by the Gosford branch of the Arts Council of NSW, an association formed to encourage artistic expression and the appreciation of The Arts across the region. Councillor Jim Tarbox and arts advocate Phyllis Bennett were among a small group of members instrumental in staging the Prize at that time. Acclaimed artist Sir Russell Drysdale, a Central Coast resident, was the first judge of the Prize and served as its Patron until 1979. Drysdale was most likely responsible for the appointment of other high-profile judges such as Daniel Thomas, then Curator of the Art Gallery of NSW and James Gleeson, Director of the National Gallery of Australia.

In the early years organisers struggled from year to year to find a suitable exhibition space. It was held in the Gosford Library, and subsequently in empty shops on Mann St, the Masonic Hall, the Gosford Music Society Hall, Laycock St, and even an open-air exhibition at the Gosford Waterfront. It was set up by local volunteer groups such as the Apex Club, the Lions Club, the Central Coast Art Society and the Central Coast Potters Society who were invited to manage the ceramic section of the exhibition.

After a brief lapse between 1987 to 1990, the Prize was revived in 1991 by the Multi Arts Confederation headed by arts advocate Margaret Hardy. It was run from 1991 to 1993 as part of a one-day arts festival in Kibble Park, before finding its home at the newly constructed Arts Centre at Caroline Bay completed in 1994. From 1994 to 1997 it was known as the Gosford Sister City Art Prize before being renamed the Frog Hollow Gosford City Art Exhibition in 1999.

In the year 2000 the Gosford Art Prize found a permanent home in the newly built Gosford Regional Gallery and has been a fixture of the exhibition program at the Gallery ever since. Over the last 27 years it has expanded in popularity and scale with an increasing number of entries and prize money. From the 48 paintings entered in 1970 the Prize now attracts over 1000 entries each year from around Australia.