David Egan wins 2026 Bayside Painting Prize

Selected from 49 finalists drawn from more than 500 entries, Decreation machine is a reworking of Antonello da Messina’s Early Renaissance painting Pietà (c. 1476). Through a gradual painterly process, Egan atomises the source image into a grid of coloured fragments, the figures of Christ and the angels breaking down into shards of pigment that recall light passing through stained glass. The work continues the artist’s long-running inquiry into what he describes as “colour handling”—an investigation into the materiality of images and the conceptual, emotional and spiritual registers of paint.

The judging panel—Jacqueline Doughty, Assistant Director, Curatorial, Art Gallery of Ballarat; Dr Shelley McSpedden, Senior Curator and Head of Exhibitions, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; and Joanna Bosse, Curator, Bayside Gallery—praised the work for the way it rewards close looking and continues to reveal itself over time. The judges noted Egan’s overlay of personal painterly language with the canons of art history, describing the work as a demonstration of painting’s capacity to continuously reinvent itself.

Egan holds a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) from Curtin University and a PhD in Fine Art from Monash University, where he currently lectures in the Department of Fine Art. His work has been included in significant group exhibitions including Painting. More Painting at ACCA (2016) and Thin Skin at MUMA (2023). In 2022 he published Colour Handling, a collection of essays on colour painting.

The $10,000 acquisitive Beckett Local Prize was awarded to Betra Fraval for Taking flight, 2025. The work will enter the Bayside City Council Art and Heritage Collection. The judges commended Fraval’s restraint and skill in mark-making, describing the painting as delicate and intuitive, with a quiet resonance that opens space for the viewer’s own imaginative interpretation. Taking flight marks a shift in Fraval’s practice toward a visual language that balances expressive, intuitive mark-making with the suggestion of recognisable forms—mountains, a bird in flight—hovering between representation and abstraction.

Fraval holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the Victoria College of the Arts and has held fourteen solo exhibitions since 2008, alongside residencies at Bundanon, Sanskriti Kendra in India, Sachaqa Centro De Arte in Peru, Hôtel Sainte Valière in France, and the Helsinki International Artist Programme.

The 2026 Bayside Painting Prize finalist exhibition is on view at Bayside Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne, until 14 June 2026. Visitors can vote for the $1,000 People’s Choice Award, to be announced at the close of the exhibition.

Image: Installation view, David Egan, Decreation machine, 2025. Oil on canvas. Courtesy: the artist and Bayside Art Gallery.