24th Dobell Drawing Prize
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24th Dobell Drawing Prize
Saturday June 21
2025
The Dobell Drawing Prize is Australia’s leading prize for drawing, and an unparalleled celebration of technique, innovation and expanded practice. Presented at the National Art School in partnership with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, this biennial exhibition continues to highlight the enduring relevance and changing role of drawing within contemporary art practice. The winning work enters the National Art School’s significant collection, built over the past 120 years.
This 24th edition is curated by Lucy Latella and showcases the work of 56 finalists, selected from 965 nationwide entries by judging panel Vernon Ah Kee, Dr Yolunda Hickman and Paula Latos-Valier AM. The works, through various media, consider a range of themes including domesticity and community, environmental care, and the impacts of colonisation and climate change.
Image: Eamonn Jackson, Aftermath, 2021 – 2023, graphite on paper, image courtesy and © the artist.
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We are delighted to announce Margaret Ambridge’s work Cheek by jowl (2024) as the winner of the People’s Choice Award for the 24th Dobell Drawing Prize. A huge congratulations to Margaret, who also won the People’s Choice Award for the 23rd Dobell Drawing Prize in 2023.
Margaret shares:
‘My primary practice is drawing. To have three very different, some say demanding, works exploring the human condition accepted for the Dobell Drawing Prize over the years is such a rare privilege and wonderful recognition of my artwork. For many years I have struggled with drawing’s place in my art practice. To me there always seems to be an external pressure suggesting that drawing is a pathway to something ‘bigger’ like a painting or a sculpture. The longevity and gravitas of the Dobell demands that drawing be seen as the final work in its own right. It’s been a long journey from drawing at the kitchen table as a child with my mother, an artist in her own right.’
24th Dobell Drawing Prize Winner
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We are delighted to announce NAS alumna Rosemary Lee as the winner of the 24th Dobell Drawing Prize, Australia’s leading prize for drawing, worth $30,000.
Selected from 56 nationwide finalists, and 965 entries, Rosemary’s work will become part of the National Art School’s significant collection, built over the past 120 years. Rosemary, in her winning work 24 – 1 (2024), observes tonal and compositional profundity in everyday life.
The judging panel comprising acclaimed First Nations artist Vernon Ah Kee, Paula Latos-Valier AM, Trustee and Art Director of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, and Dr Yolunda Hickman, Head of Postgraduate Studies, National Art School, commented of Rosemary’s work: “The decision to award the 24th Dobell Drawing Prize to Rosemary Lee for the work ‘24−1’ was unanimous. We were most impressed by the level of visual intensity the artist has achieved in this work both through its vibrant colour and in the extraordinary detail of the composition. The artwork’s exploration of the urban landscape and gentrification of the Sydney suburbs of Ashfield and Summer Hill, has produced an image capturing a broader sense of transience and the omnipresence of construction sites in our cities today. It questions the cultural and historical value of place, through the lens of the artist’s personal connection.”
Read Nick Galvin’s profile on Rosemary Lee and the Dobell Prize for Sydney Morning Herald here.
24th Dobell Drawing Prize Finalists
- Badra Aji
- Margaret Ambridge
- Chesca Athas
- Michael Bell
- Ellen Bird
- Cath Brophy
- Osvaldo Budet
- Peter Burke
- Tom Carment
- Genevieve Carroll
- Tracey Clement
- Hannah Cooper
- Sal Cooper
- Artemisia Cornett
- Maryanne Coutts
- Jan Davis
- Philip Faulks
- Todd Fuller
- Yvette Hamilton
- Eamonn Jackson
- Susan Jacobsen
- Martin King
- Anke Klevjer
- Rosemary Lee
- Jennifer Mills
- Andrew Nicholls
- Nadia Odlum
- Julie Paterson
- Nic Plowman
- Jaime Prosser
- Imogen Eve Rowe
- Linda Schneider
- Amy Sibenaler
- Sally Simpson
- Julian Aubrey Smith
- J9 Stanton
- Floria Tosca
- Claire Tozer
- Shonah Trescott
- Leonardo Uribe
- Paul White
- Agus Wijaya
Vernon Ah Kee
Vernon Ah Kee is a contemporary artist and activist, primarily based in Meanjin/Brisbane. His conceptual text pieces, videos, photographs and drawings form a critique of Australian culture from the perspective of the Aboriginal experience of contemporary life. Ah Kee’s works respond to the history of the romantic and exoticised portraiture of ‘primitives’, and effectively reposition the Aboriginal in Australia from an ‘othered thing’, anchored in museum and scientific records to a contemporary people inhabiting real and current spaces and time.
Ah Kee has exhibited widely in major Australian museums and organisations including the National Gallery of Australia, National Museum of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of Modern Art, Artspace, Griffith University Art Gallery, Campbelltown Arts Centre, and in the 16th Biennale of Sydney. His work has also been included in major international exhibitions including the 14th Istanbul Biennial, Australian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia (2016) at Harvard Art Museums, and Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art (2013) at the National Gallery of Canada. He is represented by Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane.
Paula Latos-Valier AM
Paula Latos-Valier AM is a US-born curator and visual arts administrator whose career in senior visual arts roles spans over four decades in Australia. She is currently Art Director and Trustee for the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation and Chair of the S.H. Ervin Gallery Advisory Committee. In 2024, she retired from nine years of service as Vice President of the Art Gallery of New South Wales membership organisation, Art Gallery Society of New South Wales (AGS).
Latos-Valier was instrumental in the management and delivery of the Biennale of Sydney from 1981 – 89, and became General Manager in 1997 and Managing Director in 2004 until 2007. Her former positions also include Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, coordinator of the inaugural Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1990, and International Exhibition Manager for the Australian Gallery Director’s Council. She has been a board member of the Australian American Fulbright Commission, Alliance Française de Sydney and Visual Arts/Craft of the Australia Council.
She was awarded a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2005 and an Honorary AM in 2018 for her service to the arts and academic exchange.
Dr Yolunda Hickman
Dr Yolunda Hickman joined the National Art School in 2024 as Head of Postgraduate Studies. She is from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand where she was the Postgraduate Programme Leader, Fine Arts at Whitecliffe College. Hickman works in the wider fields of painting and drawing, aiming to test the potential of images and communication systems. Using various technologies and painting mediums, she explores slippages of meaning production and cultural histories by separating visualisations from communicative functions. Often drawing from cultural source materials – maps, craft, design, diagrams, pop culture, media – Hickman builds on the histories of painting to understand the dissemination, politics, and construction of meaning through image.
Hickman’s work has been exhibited widely across Aotearoa, including at Te Tuhi, Adam Art Gallery, Blue Oyster, and Sumer Fine Arts. She was awarded the 4 Plinths Sculpture Commission by the Wellington Sculpture Trust in 2019, with Signal Forest opening the following year on the Te Papa Tongarewa forecourt. In 2016, she undertook the RM Summer Residency in Auckland as well as a residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada.
Hickman holds a Doctorate of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. She is the Visual Arts Advisor to the Copyright Licensing New Zealand board to develop strategies supporting advocacy and policy for artists’ rights and education.
William Dobell’s love of drawing was recognised in 1993 when the Art Gallery of New South Wales established an annual drawing prize in his name, initiated by the trustees of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation. For twenty years, the annual Dobell Prize for Drawing encouraged excellence in drawing and draughtsmanship among Australian artists. Past winners include Kevin Connor, David Fairbairn, Virginia Grayson, Nicholas Harding, Ann Pollak, Gareth Sansom, Jan Senbergs, Garry Shead, Aida Tomescu, and Justine Varga.
Building on the legacy of this respected award, the National Art School partnered with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation in 2019 to produce the inaugural Dobell Drawing Prize at NAS. This new iteration of the $30,000 acquisitive Prize celebrates technical skill, innovation and expanded definitions of drawing.
The National Art School provides a context for the Dobell Drawing Prize to thrive in. The exhibition has previously been shown as part of the NAS Festival of Drawing, a biennial event organised by the School’s National Centre for Drawing. The festival includes talks, workshops and a research symposium. The Prize also compliments the School’s esteemed academic drawing program: drawing is a core component of all studies at NAS and is taught throughout each degree.
Dobell Prize for Drawing at the Art Gallery of NSW
Visit the AGNSW website for the full archive of the Dobell Prize for Drawing (1993 – 2012).
William Dobell
Although a reserved and unassuming man, William Dobell’s two years teaching at the National Art School had a profound effect on his students. Many describe his love for drawing, and his outstanding draughtsmanship was apparent when he demonstrated drawing in his classes at NAS.
Sir William Dobell was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, on 24 September 1899. He moved to Sydney in 1924 to study at the Julian Ashton Art School, where he met many artists who would later teach at the National Art School. In 1929 he won the Society of Artists Travelling Scholarship and lived in London for ten years, painting and studying at the Slade School of Fine Art. When his scholarship ran out after three years, he supported himself by producing posters and illustrations for magazines, acting as an extra in films, and working with fellow Australian artists decorating the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow in 1937.
On his return to Sydney in 1939 his friend Douglas Dundas offered him a part time teaching position at East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School). He taught drawing from nature, costume drawing and became highly respected as the ‘life master’, teaching life drawing in the studios on the top floor of building 16. He taught at NAS until 1941, when he left to work as a camouflage artist during WW2. After the war, Dobell occasionally filled in as a lecturer at NAS, teaching the students studying there under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme.
In 1943 Dobell won the Archibald Prize, Australia’s principal award for portraiture, for a painting of fellow artist and former NAS student Joshua Smith. The award was immediately challenged on the grounds that Dobell’s entry showed a degree of distortion, which made it a caricature rather than a true portrait, but the court upheld the judging panel’s decision. Resultant newspaper publicity greatly expanded interest in Dobell’s work, but as a result of the controversy Dobell withdrew to Wangi Wangi, a small coastal town north of Sydney, where he set up a studio. He won the Archibald Prize twice more, in 1948 with a portrait of former NAS student Margaret Olley, and in 1959 with a portrait of Dr Edward McMahon. Dobell continued to draw all his life, filling sketchbooks and recording the life and people of Wangi Wangi. He was knighted in 1966 and died on May 14, 1970.
Sir William Dobell Art Foundation
The Sir William Dobell Art Foundation was formed in 1971 from the artist’s bequest with instructions that ‘a Foundation be established for the benefit and promotion of art in NSW.’ The Foundation has sponsored a wide variety of projects since then, including exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, scholarships and major public art commissions. The SWDAF first joined forces with NAS in 1998 to present the Dobell Drawing School – an annual, week-long workshop for year 11 students. Now in its twentieth year, this educational partnership has expanded to include the Dobell Regional Teachers’ Workshop, which gives rural teachers the opportunity to work with a practising NAS artist.
The new Dobell Drawing Prize runs in alternative years to the Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, affirming the SWDAF’s commitment to continuing the development of drawing as a medium in its own right, and a fundamental element of the visual arts.
Art Director of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation Paula Latos-Valier states:
‘The Dobell Drawing Prize has many great attributes – it is very democratic in that any artist can enter and there are no restrictions to subject matter or medium. This freedom from curatorial constraint is a distinguishing feature. The Prize has always championed the idea of peer group assessment by inviting respected practicing artists to select the finalists and determine the prize-winner. Lastly, being an acquisitive prize means that the winning work goes into a public collection and leaves a tangible legacy for future generations. The Foundation is excited that this will continue in this new partnership with NAS.’
Journey through what drawing can be with the 24th Dobell Drawing Prize Education Kit. This resource is written in line with the years 7 – 10 Visual Arts Syllabus and the Higher School Certificate Visual Arts Syllabus, as a guide to exploring the exhibition or as a pre/post visit resource. Tertiary students and the general public may also find the resource useful.
Teachers can use this resource to engage students in a critical appreciation of contemporary drawing. The resoruce encourages students to consider range of expressive forms, themes, and genres which will inform their own artmaking.