We are thrilled to present this year’s Main Awards Judges. These experts will select the winners of The Richard Lester Prize for Portraiture ($50,000), the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize ($5,000) and a Highly Commended Prize (up to $5,000) which will be exhibited at WA Museum, Boola Bardip from 14 September – 17 November 2024.
Alec Coles is CEO of the Western Australian Museum which has branches in Perth, Fremantle, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Albany and Carnarvon, and also works in communities throughout WA.
He was, previously, Director of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, in North East England and before that, the CEO of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust, and environmental charity.
He led the development of the New Western Australian Museum in Perth – the WA Museum Boola Bardip; a $400 million project, completed in November 2020, a place where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People’s voices balance those of others.
Mr Coles was also a member of the team that delivered the award-winning National Anzac Centre in Albany.
Mr Coles aspires to create museums owned and valued by their communities and admired by the world.
Mr Coles is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. He has held many non-executive positions and is the current Chair of the Partners’ Council of the Western Australian Biodiversity Sciences Institute. He is also the Chair of the Finance and Resources Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and a former Chair of ICOM Australia.
Mr Coles was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2010.
In 2021, he was named Western Australian of the Year in the Arts and Culture category.
Rex Butler is Professor of Art History in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture at Monash University. He writes about Australian art and his most recent publication is UnAustralian Art: Ten Essays on Transnational Art History with ADS Donaldson (Power Publishing, 2022). He is one of the founding editors of Memo Review, a weekly art review website in Melbourne.
Hannah Mathews is Director/CEO of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). Over the last twenty years she has held key curatorial positions at Monash University Museum of Art, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Next Wave, The South Project and the Biennale of Sydney.
Hannah’s recent curatorial projects include Shelley Lasica: WHEN I AM NOT THERE (2022); Vivienne Binns: On and through the surface (2022); D Harding: Through a lens of visitation (2021); Agatha Gothe-Snape: The Outcome is Certain (2020); Shapes of Knowledge, MUMA (2019); and Alicia Frankovich & Lili Reynaud Dewar (2018).
Hannah graduated with a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne in 2002 and has completed curatorial residencies in New York, Berlin, Tokyo and Venice. She has taught in curatorial programs at Melbourne University, Monash University and RMIT University, Melbourne and has held various board positions, including National Association for the Visual Arts, City of Melbourne Arts & Culture and International Art Space, Perth. Her publication, To Note: Notation Across Disciplines won the inaugural Cornish Family Book Prize for Art and Design Publishing in 2018.
We are thrilled to present this year’s Pre-selection Panellists. This dynamic group of professionals will select the 40 Finalists for the 2024 Lester Prize to be exhibited at WA Museum, Boola Bardip from 13 September – 27 October 2024.
Clothilde is a Wardandi (Nyoongar) and Badimaya (Yamatji) First Nations curator, writer and advocate, and is currently the Lead, Cultural Strategy and Development at Edith Cowan University.
Clothilde was previously Curator and Head of Indigenous Programs at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia in Sydney.
Clothilde was one of 5 artist-curator teams selected as finalists to curate the Australian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2018.
She is co-Chair of Indigenous Voices, a program initiated by Clothilde and Art Monthly Australasia to develop a cohort of Aboriginal critical arts writers.
Clothilde is also on the Board of the International Association of Art Critics (Australia) and is currently the Chair of the Board of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).
Emily Eastgate Brink an Associate Professor in the History of Art at UWA, where she specialises in portraiture, photography, and representations of the body in the nineteenth century.
Prior to joining the School of Design at UWA, Emily worked as a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, a Mellon Fellow with the Stanford Humanities Center, and as Georges Lurcy Fellow with the Centre for Asian Research in Paris.
Her work has received support from a variety of organisations, including: The Australian Institute of Art History, the National Library of Australia, as well as UWA’s Research Collaboration Award.
Luisa Hansal (b.1990, Aotearoa / New Zealand) completed her Master of Fine Art (High Distinction) at RMIT University and was awarded the Lowensteins Arts Management Graduate prize in 2017.
In 2012 she graduated from Edith Cowan University with a Bachelor Degree in Contemporary Arts, majoring in Visual Arts. Subsequent to graduating she was awarded a placement in HATCHED at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and received a 6 week residency at the ECU Printmaking studio.
Luisa underwent a 3 month residency in Berlin in 2014, and a 6 week residency at PICA in 2016. She has exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Germany.
Luisa’s most recent achievements include: ‘Upward rush of Devotion’, her second solo exhibition at sweet pea, ‘State of Abstraction’ curated by Isobel Wise, an exhibition examining abstraction at The Art Gallery of Western Australia, ‘always holding something’, a solo exhibition at Goolugatup Heathcote, ‘Gotham Gets Picked’, a group exhibition at Janet Holmes a Court Gallery, ‘Fluffy’, a solo exhibition at sweet pea, ‘Ariel’s Song’, a group exhibition curated by Gemma Weston and presented by Perth Festival at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, ‘Salon Vernissage’ an invitational group exhibition at PICA, and ‘City of Joondalup Invitation Art Prize’ (selected finalist).
Her work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Wesfarmers and Edith Cowan University.
Luisa is represented by sweet pea; an art gallery in Boorloo (Perth) on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar.
Living and working in Boorloo (Perth) Miranda has been working in arts management for over 10 years with a background in community development, curation, and education. Before her current role of Creative Producer at the WA Museum Boola Bardip she was the Operations Manager at not-for-profit organisation AWESOME Arts, overseeing their education programs and delivery of the AWESOME International Arts Festival for Bright Young Things. Other work history includes roles at the City of Joondalup, Ellenbrook Arts and freelance curation.
Throughout her career she has worked with a range of communities across the state to deliver high quality projects for stakeholders with a focus on accessibility.
With a BA in Cultural Heritage studies from Curtin University and a Graduate Certificate in Social Impact through the Centre for Social Impact at the University of Western Australia, Miranda has a strong interest in the development stages of a project and how elements come together to create a project that is meaningful with long lasting impact. She is passionate about working with communities to tell their stories through creative projects, exhibitions, festivals, and event programming.
Will Yeoman is CEO of peak creative writing body Writing WA. A former AGWA gallery guide and festival director, Will was for many years Senior Arts Writer and Literary Editor at The West Australian. He continues to cover arts and travel for the same publication as a freelancer, and to contribute to Limelight Music Arts & Culture magazine and Gramophone (UK).
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