Finalist: MA Prize, Sydney Contemporary 2026
big things, clive, ned, ned on horse, star wars, brett, margaret, my uncle’s car, fancy soap, slappy machines, the libs nuclear station finally built, kangaroos, an afl ball, aukus sub, that airline that went bust that my late grandfather had heaps of unused voucher points to and an emu with cockatoos also, 2026
Digital collage, woven jacquard tapestry, custom frame
173 x 315 cm
Jackson Farley
3 - 6 Sep 2026
We are excited to announce that Jackson Farley has been selected as a finalist for the 2026 MA Art Prize, presented by MA Financial Group at Sydney Contemporary.
Now in its fourth year, the $25,000 acquisitive prize recognises and supports emerging and early-career artists exhibiting new work at Sydney Contemporary.
The winning work will be announced ahead of the opening of the fair and acquired for the MA Financial Group corporate art collection.
Jackson Farley’s selected work will be on show in our booth at Carriageworks, 3–6 September 2026.
Farley’s overlays contemporary Australian culture onto a sixteenth-century Flemish pastoral landscape, collapsing inherited European visions of paradise into everyday national debris. Through absurdity and humour, Farley confronts uncomfortable questions of ownership, belonging, and national identity. The composition stages an unstable collision of nostalgia and spectacle, asking how these myths shape belonging and control unceded land. Ultimately, Farley’s practice exposes the contradictions embedded within archaic power structures and belief systems.