small works art prize 2025

We are excited to welcome you to the 2025 Small Works Art Prize, Australia’s largest open-call art prize for artworks measuring 35x35x35cm or less!

This year, our Small Works Art Prize showcases the work of over 660 artists practicing throughout Australia and beyond. As a result, the exhibition collection is as diverse as it is expansive, featuring hundreds of artworks encompassing all artistic disciplines including painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, weaving and more!

Whether you are an artist, an art collector or just an art lover, this is an event not to be missed!

Small works art prize exhibition
5–18 january 2025

CELEBRATION EVENT
FRIDAY 10 January, 6–9PM

PRIZES

Over $12,000 in prizes to be awarded, including:

First Prize + Second Prize + BSG Exhibition Prize: Supported by BSG + Works on Paper Prize: Supported by Melbourne Etching Supplies + Photography Prize: Supported by Photography Studies College + Object Prize: Supported by Craft Victoria + Honourable Mention: Supported by Art Guide Australia + Honourable Mention: Supported by Prism Imaging + People's Choice Award: Supported by Art Shed and Everyday Coffee + Plus more! +

2025 winners

meet our guest judge

EMILY SEXTON
DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING, ACMI

Emily Sexton is Director of Programming for ACMI, Australia’s museum of screen culture. Her ongoing interest in the radical and relevant aligns strongly with her current role, leading the curatorial, film, industry and public programs in a future-focused, vibrant museum whose audience is majority under 35.

An experienced curator, Artistic Director and executive producer, Emily has developed a leading practice for storytelling in new forms - across the performing arts, digital, broadcast, visual arts, literature and ideas. From 2018-2023 Emily was Artistic Director for Arts House, Melbourne’s home for contemporary performance and experimental practice. In this role Emily oversaw structural and systemic change to Arts House at a programming, leadership, staffing and infrastructure level to address racial and disability justice in the arts. Highlights of her time include commissioning new major works by Marrugeku, Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, Australian Dance Theatre, The Rabble, Dan Daw and Latai Tamaepoeu in addition to major festival and partnerships such as Dance Massive, and The Warehouse Residency, a ground-breaking disability-led commissioning approach. In 2019, Emily co-founded BLEED: a biennial commissioning festival for new art that looks at the relationship between live and digital, in Australia and Taiwan.

Emily’s previously leadership roles include Head of Programming for The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas (2015-17), Artistic Director of Next Wave (2010-14) and Creative Producer of Melbourne Fringe (2008-10). She is a Sidney Myer Creative Fellow, alumni of multiple Creative Australia Leadership programs and serves as a trustee of the Malcolm Robertson Foundation.

important information for artists