Jack Ball wins $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize at Art Gallery of South Australia
Jack Ball has won the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize for an artist under 40 for their installation Heavy Grit.
The Ramsay prize, announced today at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), is awarded every two years and is open to young Australian artists working in any medium.
Ball was inspired to make the installation — which combines photography and sculpture — after they encountered a collection of scrapbooks from the Australian Queer Archives in Melbourne. As a trans man, they were particularly interested in press clippings from the 1950s and 70s about trans people — some were transphobic, while others showed instances of care and desire.
Originally curated by Sarah Wall, Heavy Grit first opened at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in 2024.
The judges for the Ramsay prize — Archibald winner Julie Fragar, head of visual art at the Queensland College of Art and Design; fellow artist Michael Zavros; and AGSA deputy director Emma Fey — were impressed by Heavy Grit's "experimental processes and sophisticated creative resolve".
"We were particularly struck by the installation's restless, kinetic quality that refuses definition and creates an open opportunity to connect individually with the materials, forms and images the work deploys."
The other 22 finalists in this year's prize — chosen from more than 500 entries — include Archibald Prize finalists Clara Adolphs and Jason Phu (also a former Ramsay finalist), and past finalists Emma Buswell, Liam Fleming, Alfred Lowe, Gian Manik, Tom Polo and James Tylor.
Ball's work will be acquired by the gallery; past winners of the prize, which has run since 2017, are Vincent Namatjira, Sarah Contos, Kate Bohunnis and Ida Sophia. Fragar won the Ramsay's inaugural People's Choice prize in 2017.
Ball is only the second Ramsay Art Prize winner to be based outside of South Australia; they live in Sydney, where they were born, but were raised in Perth.
The Ramsay Art Prize exhibition runs May 31-August 31 at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
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