Joint winners announced for 2025 Bayside Painting Prize

In a decision that reflects the strength and breadth of this year’s entries, judges of the 2025 Bayside Painting Prize have awarded the $25,000 Major Prize jointly to Steven Rendall for Myriad reflector IV (2025) and Ella Dunn for Small town gossip (2024).

Established in 2015, the prize remains a key opportunity to recognise exceptional talent and support artists at all stages of their careers. Rendall and Dunn were chosen from a pool of 47 finalists. According to the judging panel – Dr Vincent Alessi (Linden New Art), Melissa Keys (Heide Museum of Modern Art), and Joanna Bosse (Bayside Gallery) – the decision reflects the compelling nature of both works, which “articulate a deep knowledge of art history and hold our attention intellectually, materially and conceptually.”

Steven Rendall’s Myriad reflector IV takes a disco ball as its central motif, but behind its shimmering surface lies a conceptual investigation into image-based culture. “I’ve had this motif on file for years,” Rendall said. “It surfaced as one possibility amongst many others, but then I found it compelling…it drifts across the union movement, half-forgotten patents, pop music and disco, spectacle and the trinkets of the everyday.”

A defining feature of Rendall’s practice is the grid: both as a visual device and conceptual underpinning. “The grid is an obsession, a compulsion, possibly an addiction,” he said. “It’s an emblem of modernity and control. Leaving it visible reveals the method.” In this painting, multiple grids intersect: the mirrored surface of the disco ball, the grid used in its transfer to canvas and the implied grid that organises the viewer’s gaze.

“In Rendall’s hands, the disco ball becomes a multifaceted universe of references,” the judges remarked. “It reflects both the present and past in a playful and iconic form… displaying virtuosity and deft control of the medium.”

Ella Dunn’s painting Small town gossip is based on observations from her recent artist residency in Portugal.

“Each morning, I’d visit the town square and have coffee at a café where many local women gathered,” Dunn said. “There was something timeless and universal in those scenes, a quiet ritual of connection that could belong anywhere in the world.”

The composition, animated by pattern, gesture and a dynamic interplay of textures, is the product of careful revision as well as intuitive mark making. “While creating this painting, I worked from several iterations of a drawing based on the same scene,” Dunn explained. “I kept reworking, cropping, and altering the compositions. It was important to me that many of the figures felt incomplete or partially obscured – as if the viewer is catching just a glimpse, rather than being given the full story.”

“The energy and action permeate the entire painting,” the judges observed. “Dunn’s restraint and control of her medium is impressive… we are drawn in as fellow café companions.”

Winning the Bayside Painting Prize, Dunn said, is “incredibly encouraging. As an artist, much of the work happens alone in the studio, and it’s easy to fall into self-doubt or face setbacks along the way. So, receiving this kind of recognition really motivates me to keep going, to keep experimenting, and to continue developing my practice.”

Rendall also expressed his delight in receiving the prize. “This is the first painting prize I’ve won…It’s always nice to be part of the shortlisted exhibition but it’s wonderful to win this award. The money will be used to pay for materials and other practice-related costs and will make a huge difference to me and my ways of working.”

Also awarded on the night was the $10,000 acquisitive Beckett Local Prize, which went to Michelle Ussher. The People’s Choice Award, valued at $1,000, will be announced following the conclusion of the exhibition.

The finalist exhibition is open to the public at Bayside Gallery until Sunday 22 June. For more information, visit the Bayside Gallery website.