The 56th Blake Prize for Religious Art

2008 Judges

A non acquisitive prize of $20,000, known as the Blake Prize for Religious Art, will be awarded, in the opinion of the judges, for the best contemporary religious and/or spiritual art work submitted. The Blake Prize is strictly non-sectarian.

Past judges are listed beside winning artworks in the Past Winners section.

2008 JUDGES:

Dr Kathleen McPhillips

Kathleen McPhillips is a senior lecturer in Humanities at the University of Western Sydney. She has written extensively in the area of gender and religion, new age religions, and contemporary spirituality. She is co-author (with Lynne Hume)  of Popular Spiritualities: The Politics of Contemporary Enchantment (Ashgate, 2006) and her latest book (co-authored with feminist theologian Lisa Isherwood) is Post-Christian Feminisms: A Critical Appraisal (Ashgate 2008). She is President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion, co-editor of the Seachanges Journal, and on the international Advisory Board for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.

Lachlan Warner

Lachlan Warner's art spans photography, sculpture and installation.  His work celebrates and critiques Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhism. Lachlan lectures in Photography and is Gallery Coordinator at ACU. He was the winner of the Blake in 2001, the Campbelltown Contemporary Art Prize (2005), a finalist in the National Sculpture Award and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2003-2005).  He is represented by Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney and Cologne. 

Nick Vickers (replacing Dr Christopher Allen)

Nick Vickers replaced Dr Christopher Allen after his withdrawal during the shortlisting process.

Dr Christopher Allen (withdrawn)

Dr Christopher Allen is an art critic and historian who graduated from the University of Sydney, has worked at the Collège de France in  Paris and currently lectures at the National Art School in Sydney; he is a regular guest lecturer at the Art Gallery of NSW (both for the AG Society and Public Programmes) and at the University of Sydney (Continuing Education). He is the author of Art in Australia from Colonization to Postmodernism (London, Thames and Hudson, 1997), French Painting in the Golden Age(London, Thames and Hudson, 2003), a new edition and translation of Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy's seventeenth-century Latin treatise on the art of painting, De arte graphica (Geneva, Droz, 2005; with Yasmin Haskell and Frances Muecke) and several other books. Jeffrey Smart: unpublished paintings 1940-2007 (Melbourne, Australian Galleries) will be published in April 2008. Christopher Allen has been an art critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, Art Monthly Australia, The Sydney Review and other publications, and currently writes for The Australian Financial Review and Art and Australia.