Georgia Spain
We are thrilled to share that Georgia Spain has been announced as the Winner of the 2026 Mosman Art Prize!
About this painting, Georgia shares: “’The different ways to ward off words (After NS)’ explores bodily transformation, feminism, mythology, and the multiplicity of the self. I made this painting with the lineage of feminist mother artists close by. Here, poking out one’s tongue symbolises something larger: a defiant stance against the expectation that you can’t do or be it all. The work explores the tension between these demands and the possibility of making space for many selves at once.”
Established in 1947, the Mosman Art Prize is Australia's oldest and longest-running local government art award. Valued at $70,000, it is a prestigious national open painting prize funded by the Mosman Council. The winning artwork is acquired each year to form the historic Mosman Art Collection.
An exhibition of finalist artworks will be on display from 20 August to 26 October 2026 at Mosman Art Gallery, NSW.
Pictured: Georgia Spain, The different ways to ward off words (After NS), 2026, acrylic on canvas, 176 x 115 cm
Please join us for the launch of Georgia Spain’s ‘And suddenly, an iceberg’ and Kate Mitchell’s ‘BIG HAG NRG’ at Hugo Michell Gallery on Thursday 30th October, 6-8pm.
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GEORGIA SPAIN
And suddenly, an iceberg
‘And suddenly, an iceberg’ explores language, mythologies, grief, time and the slipperiness of memory. About this body of work, Georgia shares: “I felt a deep desire to turn inwards. That desire became the current running through this body of work — a process of mark making, writing, excavating and unearthing, and most importantly allowing the work to reveal itself. It is both story and evidence — a diaristic trace of what it means to feel deeply, to be uncertain, to live in the wake of longing or sorrow…”
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KATE MITCHELL
Big Hag NRG
‘Big Hag NRG’ reclaims the figure of the hag as an older woman who sits beyond the usefulness of patriarchy and is therefore powerful, unruly, and free. The exhibition gathers spell-objects that appear still, yet are charged with action, energy, and presence.
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Hugo Michell Gallery are proud to partner with Bird in Hand Winery for this opening event.
Hugo Michell Gallery acknowledges the Kaurna people as the traditional custodians of the Adelaide region, and that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still as important to the living Kaurna people today.
Pictured Above: Georgia Spain, The Echo, 35.5 x 41cm
Georgia Spain has been selected as a finalist in the Bayside Painting Prize with her painting ‘Cosmic Hook’.
The Bayside Painting Prize remains a celebration of contemporary Australian painting. The finalist exhibition brings together a broad range of artists, both established and lesser known, whose varied approaches to the painted medium conveys the breadth and diversity of painting in Australia today.
The finalist exhibition will be held at Bayside Gallery from 3 May to 23 June 2024.
Congratulations Georgia!
Pictured: Georgia Spain, Cosmic Hook, 2023, oil on linen, 183 x 176.5 cm
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Georgia Spain
No one tells you how to weather a storm
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Kate Kurucz
Eventual Horizon
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Hugo Michell Gallery are proud to partner with Bird in Hand Winery for this opening event. Please join us in celebrating the launch of these two exhibitions!
Hugo Michell Gallery welcomes the addition of Georgia Spain to our represented artists!
Georgia Spain is a visual artist and musician living and working in Naarm (Melbourne). She graduated with a BFA in painting from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne in 2015, where she was the recipient of the Lionel Gell Foundation Scholarship and a finalist for the Margaret Lawrence Gallery's Majlis Travelling Scholarship. In 2020, Spain was the recipient of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2021, Spain's work ‘Six Different Women’ (2021) won the Trawalla Foundation Acquisitive Prize in the Women's Art Prize Tasmania. In the same year, Spain was announced as winner of the Sir John Sulman Prize for her work ‘Getting down or falling up’ (2021).
Her work often explores the complexities of human behaviour; using narrative and storytelling to examine the cultural, political and personal. Her paintings frequently look at ideas around human spectacle, theatricality, ritual and ceremony. She is interested in the emotional and performative exchanges between people in social and psychological spaces and in her paintings physical connection is explored through bodies in groupings.
We congratulate Georgia on her achievements and look forward to her first solo exhibition at Hugo Michell Gallery in September 2023.
Register your interest at mail@hugomichellgallery.com
Georgia Spain, Hot wind, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 198 cm. Private collection.