2023 Lloyd Rees Emerging Artist Awards
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FINALISTS EXHIBITION:
Wednesday 3rd - Saturday 20th December
OPENING EVENT + AWARDS PRESENTATION
Friday 5th December
About the Award:
The biennial Lloyd Rees Emerging Artist Award (formerly the Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award) is a national prize established in 1981 to promote and support talented emerging artists in Australia. Initiated by the Lane Cove community in honour of its long-term resident and acclaimed artist Dr Lloyd Rees, who was an advocate for getting young artists involved in the arts.
Prizes:
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First Prize: 8,000 (acquisitive) + a solo exhibition to be held alongside LREAA 2027 at Gallery Lane Cove (sponsored by Lane Cove Council).
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Highly Commended: $1,500 (sponsored by Lane Cove Art Society)
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Commended: $1,000 (sponsored by Centrehouse Inc.)
Proudly supported by Lane Cove Council.
Highly commended prize $1500 sponsored by Lane Cove Art Society.
2025 JUDGES
KON GOURIOTIS OAM
Kon Gouriotis OAM has been a leading figure in Australian visual arts for over 30 years. He has held prominent roles including Director of the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (Liverpool Powerhouse), Liverpool Regional Museum and Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts (Creative Australia). Earlier in his career, he was the founding Curator of the Casula Powerhouse. As director of Casula Powerhouse, he oversaw a major redevelopment and rebranding. Kon is currently the Editor of Artist Profile magazine and co-founder of Bandicoot Publishing, which produces Bandicoot Books, Art Almanac and Artist Profile. He has served on numerous national arts and community boards and has curated significant national and internationally exhibitions. His latest exhibition Australian Abstraction is co-curated with Rhonda Davis, for the Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney.
KIRTIKA KAIN
Kirtika Kain is an artist and educator based on Dharug land in Western Sydney. Through a practice that weaves sculpture, experimental printmaking, and painting, Kirtika explores the complexities of race and caste in the diaspora, grounded in her Dalit lineage. Drawing on historical and familial archives, as well as the enduring legacy of anti-caste literature and song, Kain’s work transforms inherited narratives into material form. Her process is deeply tactile and labour-intensive, using materials of ritual, pigments, waxes, and golds to both invoke and subvert their traditional associations with purity and sacredness. These materials become vessels for ancestral memory and resistance, embodying the layered histories of Dalit experience. Her current research engages Dalit feminist thought, ancient cultural practices, and diasporic movements of anti-caste solidarity.
JACK BUCKLEY
Jack Buckley, an emerging multi-disciplinary artist based on Cammeraygal land, in Sydney, Australia. Jack’s work explores the complex world of the Australian environment, with particular focus on the nature of native flora within a human context. Applying a scientific inspired illustrative process to delicate hand-embroidered thread subjects, Jack creates meticulously detailed works which consider overlooked and unknown worlds. Jack has presented work through solo, group exhibitions and prizes in commercial, community and regional galleries and botanic gardens across Australia. As the winner of the 2023 Lloyd Rees Emerging Artist Award, Jack now returns to the award as a judge.