We are thrilled to announce Karen Black has been selected as a finalist in this year’s Wynne and Sulman prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
For the Wynne Prize, celebrating Australian landscape painting and figurative sculpture, Black’s work Body like a mountain (2026) draws on the artist’s deep connection to the mountainous landscape of the Australian bush. Layering oil and oil stick on the triple primed polyester surface, Black’s gestural, dynamic work suggests the shared energy of body and land moving together across time.
For the Sulman prize, a prominent award highlighting outstanding subject painting, genre painting and mural projects, Black was selected for her work Hidden Place (2026). Inhabited by enigmatic creatures, winding rivers and dense arboreal forms, the work depicts the artist’s “inner world” which she has described as “a landscape shaped by memory and emotion, both tangible and imagined.”
The winners for the Wynne and Sulman Prizes will be announced 8 May.
Karen Black
Wynne Prize; Sulman Prize
9 May – 16 August 2026
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, NSW