2023 Judges

Footscray Art Prize

Charlotte Day
Associate Director, University of Melbourne Art Museum

Charlotte Day is one of Australia’s leading art curators, gallery directors and managers, working with prominent institutions including Monash University Museum of Art, as well as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Gertrude Contemporary and for the Michael Buxton Collection of Australian Art. She is passionate about exhibition making, building significant contemporary art collections, art-led education and bringing the art of established as well as more emerging artists to the public eye and conversation.


Phuong Ngo
Artist and Curator

Phuong Ngo is an artist and curator living and working in Naarm (Melbourne). He is currently co-director of Hyphenated Projects with Nikki Lam and a PhD candidate at RMIT. His practice is concerned with the interpretation of history, memory and place, and how it impacts individual and collective identity. Through archival process rooted in a conceptual practice, he seeks to find linkages between culture, politics and oral histories and historic events, which intern dictates the materiality of his artistic output.


Shonae Hobson
Curator, First Nations Art, National Gallery of Victoria

Shonae Hobson is a Southern Kaantju woman from Coen, Cape York Peninsula. She currently works as Curator of First Nations Art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Hobson was the inaugural First Nations Curator at Bendigo Art Gallery where she curated Piinpi: Contemporary Indigenous Fashion (2020-21), Australia’s first major survey of contemporary Indigenous Australian fashion to be undertaken both nationally and internationally.  Hobson works collaboratively with communities and artists to foster and build capacity for economic and social independence.


Young Artists Prize

Dawn Tan

Dawn is an artist and art educator. With a strong passion in education, Dawn currently runs an art school – The Little Art Yurt. Both her creative career and workshops have been featured in magazines, press and sites. Some of which includes Gourmet Traveller, Lunch Lady Magazine, Frankie Magazine, Inside Out Magazine, The Age Newspaper, The Herald Sun, The Design Files, Broadsheet, A Cup of Jo, Apartment Therapy. Throughout her career, Dawn has also collaborated with many notable organisations such as The National Gallery of Australia, City of Melbourne's ArtPlay, National Gallery of Victoria, Third Drawer Down, Heide Museum of Modern Art, The Jacky Winter Group, Craft Victoria, South Melbourne Market and so on. Dawn’s work is largely influenced by the everyday life, especially the joys of cooking and feasting!


Kate Robinson

Kate Robinson (she/her) is an Iranian/Australian family violence lawyer and artist. To process the inadequacies of our justice system, Kate loves to create colourful loud craft. In 2020, she was the inaugural Feminist in Residence at Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, where she curated the community craftivist exhibition ‘Make a Fuss’. She currently serves on the board for independent arts organisation NextWave, and the QVWC Trust. Kate also co-creates the podcast Being Biracial, which is all about navigating the world as a mixed-race person. For her, this podcast has been a chance to delve into what makes us whole.


2019 Judges

  • Katrina Sedgwick
    Director and CEO of ACMI

  • Hannah Presley
    Curator, Australian Centre of Contemporary Art

  • Raafat Ishak
    Artist and Head of Painting, VCA University of Melbourne

  • Simon Spain
    Young Artists category judge
    Creative arts producer 

2021 Judges

  • Myles Russell-Cook
    Curator, Indigenous Art
    National Gallery of Victoria

  • Vikki McInnes
    Coordinator, Master of Fine Arts
    University of Melbourne VCA School of Art

  • Kirsty Grant
    Former Director and CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art

  • Dawn Tan
    Artist and art educator

  • Rosie Kalina
    Artist

2017 Judges

  • Jason Smith
    Director, Geelong Gallery

  • Beverly Knight
    Executive Director, Alcaston Gallery

  • Reko Rennie
    Australian artist

  • Richard Ennis
    Curator Exhibition Program, Incinerator Gallery

  • Simon Spain (Young Artists category judge)
    Creative arts producer