Pemberton glass artist Peter Kovacsy nominated for prestigious Tom Malone Prize for second year in a row

A Pemberton artist has once again been shortlisted as a finalist in Australia’s most prestigious art prize for glass artistry. Peter Kovacsy was named as one of 15 finalists for the Tom Malone Prize with his shortlisted work “Forest Sentinels” set to be showcased as part of the prize’s exhibition, and set to be shown at the Art Gallery of Western Australia next month. An annual acquisitive prize for Australian glass artists, the Tom Malone Prize is Australia’s richest prize in glass with the winner receiving the $15,000 acquisitive prize. Kovacsy, who specialises in cast glass and wood sculpture, is one of two Western Australia-based artists shortlisted for the prize in this year’s exhibition, alongside Perth-based Laurie Fossier-Mills. Kovacsy has also been a shortlist finalist for the Tom Malone Prize in 2018 and 2021. In celebration of the prize’s twentieth anniversary, the finalist works will be shown alongside each winning work since its inception in 2003. Art Gallery of Western Australia curator Robert Cook said the Tom Malone Prize has allowed the AGWA to become “intimately connected” to some of the best artists in the country, many of whom are globally renowned. “These artists just happen to make work in glass, a medium that brings together incredibly disparate visionaries, who are all virtuosos in their different ways,” he said. “Over this twenty year period, the prize has allowed us the privilege to represent major high points of their practice into our permanent collection — the learning we have undertaken through it has also allowed us to acquire outside the award in a daring and informed way. “Viewing the 2022 winner and looking across the nineteen years of winners prior, what becomes evident is a consistent commitment to a kind of sculptural form that carries rich and deep emotional content to forge poetic and considered relations to the world around us.” The winner of the Tom Malone Prize is set to be announced on June 2, with the exhibition opening the following day and running until July 31.