The John Leslie Art Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious and valuable prizes for landscape painting.

18 July – 25 October 2020

School of Art lecturer Sarah Tomasetti has been shortlisted for the John Leslie Art Prize at the Gippsland Regional Art Gallery.

Inaugurated in 2000, the John Leslie Art Prize is a national, biennial prize for landscape painting, named after the former Patron of the Gippsland Art Gallery, John Leslie OBE (1919–2016). The continuation of the Prize is made possible through the generous ongoing support of the John Leslie Foundation.

This year the Gallery received 409 artworks submitted by 334 artists from all over Australia, 50 of which have been selected as finalists. The three-member selection panel, comprised Gallery Director Simon Gregg, Curator Erin Mathews, and Art Critic Robert Nelson. The winning work is automatically acquired for the Gallery’s permanent collection.

Wayfaring is about ways of being in the landscape that become enshrined in culture. This series of works shows various points along the pilgrimage route around Mount Kailash on the Tibetan Plateau. Pilgrims perform the Kora around the holy mountain, 108 circumambulations in Buddhist scripture is believed to lead to enlightenment. As the peak has never been scaled, Kailash from the Air is drawn from an open source drone image, its wavering view a subtle analogy for the age of the Anthropocene, in which the human gaze rises along with our multiplying presence.