Rigg Design Prize $40k winner announced

Installation view of Rigg Design Prize 2025, on display 19 September 2025 to 1 February 2026 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Photo: Madeleine Burke

19 September 2025: The 10th edition of the triennial Rigg Design Prize exhibition opens today at the Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and highlights the achievements of Australian designers under the age of 35 working across ceramics, glass, furniture, woodwork, metalwork, textiles, lighting, and contemporary jewellery.

With participants debuting new and ambitious works, the exhibition offers a window into the ideas, creative processes, and motivations of young designers, and presents a compelling survey of the most accomplished design being produced in Australia today.

2025 Rigg Design Prize winner, Alfred Lowe with ‘You and me, us never apart’ made from raku clay and raffia palm. Photo heyandy, courtesy the artist and APY Art Centre Collective.

Alfred Lowe, shown above, is the winner of the $40,000 prize and his work, along with 35 finalists, is now on show at the Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria until 1 February, 2026. Alfred Lowe is an Aranda person from Snake Well in the central desert, north of Alice Springs who commenced his artistic practice in 2021 at the Indigenous-owned APY Studio. He is now based in Adelaide.

You and me, us never apart is made from raku clay and raffia palm and is Lowe’s ‘declaration of love to my community’. ‘Embracing community is complicated and full of friction, but through the pain and the joy your people are there, side by side’, he says. The work comprises two side-by-side large-scale figurative ceramics combining rigid and roughly textured clay with soft raffia adornments, exploring beauty, community and Country.

A selection of works made from wood are shown below.

Above: Olive Gill-Hille, Memento, 2025, jarrah, western sheoak, karri, tuart. ‘...at once a vessel, a shelf and a sculptural object. Memento invites reflection on how we attribute value through touch and time into tangible objects.’ Photo David Anthony

The prize was judged by a jury of Australian industry leading experts and past Rigg Design Prize winners, including Marian Hosking, jewellery designer (winner of the 2012 Prize) Adam Goodrum, Australian industrial designer (winner of the 2015 Prize), Paul Hecker and Hamish Guthrie of Hecker Guthrie, Melbourne-based interior design firm (winner of the 2018 Prize), and Simone LeAmon, Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture (winner of the 2009 Prize).

Above: Patrick Adeney, designer and maker Studio Adeney, Melbourne design studio. Banana lounge, 2025. Tasmanian blackwood, Danish paper cord, leather, brass,steel, foam. ‘The Banana lounge aspires to join a lineage of iconic Australian lounges, including Marc Newson’s 1980s Lockheed lounge and the Tessa T8 by Fred Lowen from the 1970s – the latter of which occupied pride of place in my grandparents’ lounge room.’ Photo Studio Adeney

‘The Rigg Design Prize is not only a prize exhibition; it is a celebration of excellence and the ever-evolving landscape of Australian contemporary design’, writes Simone LeAmon, now NGV Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture, in her essay accompanying the. ‘Since its inception, the prize exhibition has showcased the exceptional talents of practitioners working across a wide spectrum of disciplines, including ceramics, metalwork, textiles, jewellery, seating, product and furniture design, interior design and advertising.

Above: Georgie Szymanski, Szafka, 2025 blackwood. ‘Named after the Polish word for cabinet, Szafka is made from the blackwood-timber doors of the original kitchen cabinetry in my childhood home.’ Photo Issy Connelley

This breadth of representation underscores the prize’s commitment to recognising and promoting the diversity of contemporary design practice in Australia. The thematic explorations of each iteration of the prize provide a captivating glimpse into the creative currents shaping design practice.’

Walter Brooks, Wangatunga jirtaka jilamara, A collection of ten folded bark baskets with sawfish design, 2025, stringybark, earth pigments, bush vine. Photos: Jilamara Arts & Crafts Association

Selected from across Australia, the finalists who were invited by the NGV to compete for the $40,000 Prize are:

• Patrick Adeney (VIC, Furniture)
• Kartika Laili Ahmad (WA, Lighting)
• Ella Badu (VIC, Jewellery)
• Walter Brooks (NT, Object Design)
• Dallissa Brown (NT, Ceramics)
• Andrew Carvolth (SA, Furniture)
• Nicola Charlesworth & Kim Stanek - Object Density (NSW,
• Furniture)
• Samantha Dennis (TAS, Jewellery)
• Carly Tarkari Dodd (SA, Jewellery)
• Hamish Donaldson (VIC, Glass)
• Jack Fearon - FEARON (QLD, Furniture)
• Olive Gill-Hille (WA, Furniture)
• Marcel Hoogstad Hay (SA, Glass)
• Katherine Hubble (VIC, Jewellery)
• Jay Jermyn (QLD, Lighting)
• Nicolette Johnson (QLD, Ceramics)
• Lavinia Ketchell (QLD, Object Design)
• Claudia Lau (VIC, Ceramics)
• Nicole Lawrence (VIC, Furniture)
• Julian Leigh May (VIC, Furniture)
• Alfred Lowe (SA, Ceramics)
• Marlo Lyda (NSW, Lighting)
• Claire Markwick-Smith (SA, Furniture)
• Simone Namunjdja (NT, Object Design)
• Nathan Nhan (ACT, Ceramics)
• Annie Paxton (VIC, Furniture)
• Douglas Powell - Duzi Objects (WA, Furniture)
• Amy Seo & Shahar Cohen - Second Edition
• (NSW, Furniture)
• Emma Shepherd - Sundance Studio (VIC,
• Weaving)
• Shahn Stewart - Alchemy Orange (VIC, Object
• Design)
• Dalton Stewart (VIC, Furniture)
• Georgie Szymanski (VIC, Furniture)
• Kohl Tyler (VIC, Ceramics)
• Isaac Williams (TAS, Furniture)

Above: Isaac Williams, 2025, Rebirthed Pallet Dine, pine, polyvinyl alcohol, stainless steel, wax, oil. ‘After witnessing the large quantities of pine pallets being discarded in my home town, I developed both the table’s design and a new, broadly applicable timber rebirthing process.’ Photo: Thomas Wood

Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, said: ‘The 2025 Rigg Design Prize turns the focus to the early-career designers of our country and gives them a career-defining platform to share their work with a wide audience. This prize is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the outstanding creative achievements of our early career designers and will show an incredible breadth of skill and ability from a group who are on the rise in their careers and professional practice.’

Shahn Stewart designer and maker, and Bill Christensen steel manufacturer (Vic), Bogong wall light (detail), eucalyptus bark, stainless steel, light-emitting diode, electricals. ‘This wall light honours the native bogong moth, once abundant in the Victorian Alps… Today, light pollution and environmental changes have led to the loss of 99.5 per cent of the moth’s population… Made from layered eucalyptus bark – a key food source for the moth – this wall light evokes its habitat and former numbers.’

The Rigg Design Prize is a generous legacy of the late Colin Rigg (1895–1982), a former secretary of the NGV’s Felton Bequests’ Committee. Previously known as the Cicely and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award, the invitational prize was established in 1994 to recognise contemporary design practice in Victoria.

Images courtesy National Gallery of Victoria

Learn more at www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/rigg-design-prize