Winner announced for the 2026 MA Art Prize

The $25,000 acquisitive prize goes to a three-metre oil diptych showing with COMA at Sydney Contemporary, where all three previous winners have sold out their booths.

Australian painter Renée Estée has been named the winner of the 2026 MA Art Prize, the $25,000 acquisitive award established by MA Financial Group for an early-career artist exhibiting at Sydney Contemporary. The announcement comes ahead of the fair’s tenth edition, which opens at Carriageworks in Warrane/Sydney next week.

Estée, who is based between New York and Naarm/Melbourne, takes the prize for Empty Nest (we all wait for someone), a three-metre oil, acrylic and charcoal diptych presented by COMA (Sydney/Gadigal Country). The painting considers the cycles of leaving, waiting and becoming that shape a life. Figures drift, hover and reach across the composition while nests, eggs and a solitary bird guide movement through a luminous yellow field that reads at once as landscape, shelter and shared ground. At its heart is a deceptively simple proposition: that everyone is waiting for someone.

The work sits within a broader practice concerned with myth-making and the rituals that surround mourning, celebration and commemoration — a set of preoccupations the artist noted were given an unexpected symmetry by the award itself.

“I’m incredibly overwhelmed and deeply honoured to receive this year’s MA Art Prize,” Estée said. “The support means so much to me, not only personally, but to my practice, and after returning to Australia following six years away, this recognition feels particularly meaningful. My paintings often think about the rituals we create around change; celebration, commemoration, mourning, waiting. So there’s something wonderfully circular about a painting concerned with absence and transition becoming a reason for celebration. The prize gives me something every artist needs and rarely gets enough of: time, space and the freedom to keep making paintings. I feel incredibly lucky to be given that gift, and I can’t wait to see what grows from it.”

Now in its fourth consecutive year, the prize was established by MA Financial Group, Sydney Contemporary’s principal partner, to champion emerging and early-career artists showing at the fair. The 2026 edition increased its value to $25,000 and drew a record number of submissions.

Estée’s work was selected by a panel comprising Andrew Martin, managing director and head of asset management at MA Financial Group; Amelia Hill, senior advisor at MA Financial Group; Jarrod Rawlins, director of curatorial affairs at MONA; and Sue Cato AM, principal at Cato Counsel.

“The calibre of entries for this year’s MA Art Prize was exceptional, with a record number of submissions showcasing the strength, diversity and ambition of Australia’s emerging and early-career artists,” Martin said. “Renée’s work stood out for its compelling interplay of figuration and abstraction, brought to life through an evocative use of colour and bold, gestural brushwork. Her practice draws together the influences of her Australian origins and her life in New York City, resulting in a distinctive and confident visual language.”

The four remaining finalists were Naarm/Melbourne-based photographer Alex Walker, Yolŋu artist Binygurr Wirrpanda, Gadigal/Sydney-based multidisciplinary artist Jackson Farley and Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Rebecca Diele.