Karla Marchesi has won the 2026 Gold Award at Rockhampton Museum of Art for Wasted Waiting (2025), an oil painting on linen that will enter the museum’s collection. Announced on 10 July, the $50,000 acquisitive prize is awarded biennially and supports the development of the institution’s holdings of contemporary Australian art.
Selected by artist Jenny Watson from an exhibition of 21 works by eight invited artists, Wasted Waiting reflects Marchesi’s distinctive approach to painting, in which botanical forms become stand-ins for the human figure. Her compositions draw on the visual language of historical painting while unsettling its conventions through excess, ornament and dark humour.
Marchesi has described her practice as a response to the social and existential pressures of the present, using elaborate natural worlds to consider the human condition under late capitalism and anthropocentrism. The absence of the human figure does not diminish its presence; instead, plants and animals occupy the scene as witnesses to human behaviour.
Watson praised Marchesi’s ability to draw across art-historical traditions while maintaining a distinctive contemporary voice. Marchesi, meanwhile, described the award as “a gift of freedom” that would enable her to further develop her practice.
The winning work was exhibited at Rockhampton Museum of Art from 4 July to 6 September 2026. As an acquisitive prize, the Gold Award offers more than recognition: it places the work within a public collection, extending its life beyond the exhibition and into the museum’s longer institutional history.
