Having had to close its doors soon after the exhibition began, Wagga's glass gallery has employed technology to keep its national prize running.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The biannual National Emerging Art Glass Prize opened in March and has had to be judged through a virtual tour of the gallery space.
"It had only been open for 10 days when the gallery had to close [due to COVID-19 restrictions," said gallery director Caroline Geraghty.
"Usually the judges would travel to exhibition and make the winners announcement, but that's all had to be done remotely."
Related:
Over the past week, glass gallery curator Michael Scarrone has documented each of the 23 finalists' works and created a video walk-through of the space to help the judges make their assessment.
"I think there are certain constraints to judging it this way," Mr Scarrone said.
"I took a lot of photos and a 360-video."
This year, the judges were Canberra-based artists Holly Grace and Tom Rowney.
"[The judges] are professional glassmakers, they've been doing this for 20 or 30 years full time all over the world.
"They can gleam what they need from what we've got, but it's a challenge."
Above all other challenges, Mr Scarrone said it was the disappointment of not being able to gather together for the award announcement that the judges focused on.
Instead of the gala gathering, the announcement was made via the gallery's Facebook and Instagram pages at noon on Friday.
As has become the tradition, the announcement was made by previous winner, Rose-Mary Faulkner.
Nancy Yu was awarded the prize, for her work 'Head Case' glass artworks.
Highly commended was Jessica Murtagh's Modern Relic III: Quality time together and Lewis Grant's Queer (Vulnerability).
"Even though we can't all be together at this time, the gallery has so many good resources for you to be able to access this exhibition," said 2018 winner Rose-Mary Faulkner in announcing the winners.
For the first time in a while, this year's prize will also include audience participation, in the form of the people's choice award.
"We'll have some video and audio pieces from the artists themselves, talking about their works," Mr Scarrone said.
Voting can be done through the gallery's website until the end of June.