2024 JACARANDA ACQUISITIVE DRAWING AWARD WINNER
Grafton Regional Gallery is delighted to announce that Laith McGregor is the winner of the 2024 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award (JADA) $35,000 first prize with his sculptural charcoal drawing, Untitled (support).
Nix Francia is the winner of the $5,000 Early Career Award for their drawing, Love at midnight: blood edition.
The 2024 JADA was judged by Michelle Newton, Deputy Director at Artspace, Sydney. Michelle Newton said many of the artists in the 2024 JADA took an interdisciplinary approach to the medium of drawing, with an experimental spirit that challenges our understanding of what drawing is, “Laith McGregor’s work is a prime example of this. There is something very primary and dynamic in his mark-marking and the way he builds up the surface. His drawing creates an atmosphere charged with emotion, blurring traditional portraiture with abstraction. Similarly, Nix Francia’s work plays with light, texture and bodily materials, drawing on personal narratives to create a sense of intimacy.”
Laith McGregor is a Northern Rivers-based artist, whose practice spans painting and drawing. He has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas, most recently in public institutions, commercial galleries and artist run spaces including: Art Los Angeles Contemporary (LA), Museum of Contemporary Art (NSW), GOMA (QLD), MONA (TAS), and The National Gallery of Victoria (VIC). Laith McGregor is represented by Station Gallery, Sydney and Melbourne.
Early Career Award winner Nix Francia is an emerging artist based in Sydney. A recent graduate of the National Art School, their work examines the everyday and the mundane, but with a twisted and unique perspective of the human experience. In 2023 Nix was a finalist in both the Burwood Art Prize, and Blacktown City Art Prize.
With an acquisitive first prize of $35,000 and early career award of $5,000, the JADA is the nation’s leading regional drawing prize. The JADA champions innovation and excellence in drawing and showcases the enduring importance of drawing practice in Australia. This year’s exhibition features works from 65 artists, including 14 from the Northern Rivers and Clarence Valley region, whose approaches to drawing span the technical and traditional, through to the experimental, conceptual and performative.
Grafton Regional Gallery would like to thank the Friends of the Gallery, the major sponsors of the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award.
The 2024 JADA is on show at Grafton Regional Gallery until Sunday 8 December 2024.
Image 1: Grafton Regional Gallery Director Sarah Gurich and 2024 JADA Judge Michelle Newton with 2024 JADA winner, Laith McGregor 'Untitled (support)', 2024. Photograph: Chloe Van Dorp, Simon Hughes Media.