Ramsay Art Prize 2025

Congratulations to Jack Ball, winner of the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize 2025, the nation’s most generous prize for Australian artists under forty, with the work Heavy Grit.

The Perth-born, Sydney-based artist explores themes of queer intimacy and desire in their winning work. Heavy Grit was developed in response to a collection of scrapbooks held by the Australian Queer Archives. Ball’s work reveals fragments and glimpses of queer histories, layering archival materials with personal images and soft form sculptures, and creating an interplay between the past and the present.

In a prize with no material boundaries, this year’s winning work is comprised of diverse mediums including inkjet prints, textured stained glass, beeswax, charcoal, copper pipe, fabric, paint, sand and rope.

The judges were unanimous in their decision and describe the winning work as sensual, experimental and sophisticated. Jack Ball’s Ramsay Art Prize 2025 entry now becomes part of AGSA's collection.

This year twenty-two finalists were selected by a panel of experts comprised of leading Australian artist Michael Zavros; Associate Professor and Program Director of Visual Art at the Queensland College of Art and Design and inaugural winner of the Ramsay’s People’s Choice Prize Julie Fragar; and Emma Fey, Acting Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Finalists

Clara Adolphs (NSW), Miguel Aquilizan (QLD), David Attwood (WA), Jack Ball (NSW), Emma Buswell (WA), Christina May Carey (VIC), Liam Fleming (SA), Bridie Gillman (QLD), Jordan Gogos (NSW), Visaya Hoffie (QLD), Lisa Khan (SA), Alfred Lowe (SA), Gian Manik (VIC), Callum McGrath (VIC) Lillian O'Neil (VIC), Jason Phu (NSW), Stanislava Pinchuk (VIC), Tom Polo (NSW), EJ Son (NSW), Shireen Taweel (NSW), James Tylor (SA), Elizabeth Willing (QLD).

The Exhibition also includes a People’s Choice Prize worth $15,000, supported by sponsor LK, and decided by public vote.