Contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts has today announced entries are open for the 20th anniversary of the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, one of Australia’s most significant awards for contemporary photographic practice.

The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award provides a national platform for emerging and established artists. As the richest prize for photography in Queensland, the $25,000 acquisitive award is open to artists working in the broad medium of contemporary photography. Visitors to the exhibition will also get to choose their favourite artwork with the inclusion for the first time of a $5,000 People’s Choice Award.

Exclusive to HOTA, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award was launched in 2002 in collaboration with the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Foundation. An anticipated survey of contemporary photographic practice, the award plays an important role in representing the work of artists across Australia. In 2022, an additional $25,000 is earmarked to support contemporary artists through acquisitions into the city collection.

Since the Award’s inception, 60 works have been acquired by HOTA, resulting in a celebrated collection that reflects shifts in the cultural and social landscape over two decades. This includes work by Christian Thompson, Tamara Dean, Shaun Gladwell, Danie Mellor, Darren Sylvester, Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Polixeni Papapetrou, Polly Borland, Cherine Fahd, Tony Albert, Abdul Abdullah, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Julie Rrap and Jon Lewis.

Entries for the 2022 award are now open, and artists from across Australia working in a diverse range of traditional and expanded types of photographic media, from print to digital, large format, medium, and photographic process print are encouraged to submit. Artworks created since 1 January 2020 are eligible for this year’s award.

The winner of the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award 2022 will be selected by Isobel Parker Philip, Senior Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). The work will be acquired by HOTA Gallery, home to one of Australia’s celebrated collections of 21st Century photography. The winner will be announced ahead of the opening of the 20th anniversary exhibition on 17 September 2022.

Over 30 finalists will be included in the award to be housed in the new 1000m2 main exhibition gallery. To mark the 20th anniversary, a selection of winning and acquired works will be exhibited alongside these works in a retrospective, highlighting the impact of the award over the past two decades.