Advancing art and opportunity
The Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize is the highest value art prize for women in Australia and provides a unique platform to engage, connect, support and profile women artists across Australia and internationally.
The Prize also showcases a commitment to celebrating emerging Indigenous women artists and promoting their creative talents on a national stage.
Supporting the arts inspires and strengthens communities socially, educationally, and economically- fostering creativity, empathy and beauty. Established by Ravenswood School for Girls to advance art and opportunity for women artists in Australia, the Art Prize is an annual acquisitive prize, with a total prize money of $58,000.
The Opening Night and Exhibition of Finalists is based in Sydney. Online engagement with artists and communities across Australia is facilitated via a live stream of the Opening Night, a virtual tour of the exhibition and online artwork sales platform. Artists also enter the Art Prize online, finalists being selected to exhibit their artworks in a two-week Exhibition of Finalists.
Launched in 2017, the Art Prize has grown exponentially and gained significant recognition including a multimedia marketing campaign achieving a combined reach of 3.1 million people and 7.1 million combined impressions via cross media platforms.
Colloquially referred to as a ‘movement’ for women artists by ArtsHub*, entries in the Art Prize have more than doubled from 789 in the inaugural Art Prize to 2042 in 2023, an increase of 158%.
Entries in the Art Prize represent every state and territory in Australia, including remote regions. All media is accepted and artists are asked to enter an artwork that best reflects their art practice. The Art Prize reflects Ravenswood’s commitment to nurturing and supporting creativity not only for professional and emerging artists but also for its own students. As a school for girls from Prep to Year 12, Ravenswood was keen to address the poor representation of women artists in exhibitions.
Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize has contributed to raising the profile of women artists in Australia.
Finalists have been offered exhibitions nationally and internationally, artists who first entered the Art Prize as emerging artists now consider their status as professional and the interest and support from women artists for the Art Prize has continued to grow.
Most significantly, the Art Prize has created a platform to engage women artists – Professional, Indigenous Emerging and Emerging – from across Australia. It is the mission of the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize to amplify the relevance and reality of careers in art for current and future generations of Australian women.