Meet the Finalists
We proudly present our 62 Finalists for the 2026 ACAR Art Prize.
Jesse Dayan
Title: Figure with Umbrella in the Soft Deep Light of Shanghai
The scale of Shanghai is to me almost mythical. Immense mountain ranges of steel and concrete that dissolve into flat blue planes in the near distance as they are absorbed in the soft powdery light.
In this iconic view from MAP gallery I placed a single figure under an umbrella. For me it brings to mind Caspar David Friederich and the romantic images of the solitary figure confronted with the enormity of nature.
Here however it is a contemplation of the place an individual can hold when faced with this city that stretches further than the eye can see.
Jiaqin Zhang
Title: Suspended Landscape
The work adopts a bird’s-eye perspective to fragment the city into discrete sections, using green-toned ceramic tiles to construct the landscape. At its centre, a transparent frame suggests a state of potential departure—suspending the functional role of everyday objects and transforming the urban environment into something to be observed with distance and detachment.
It brings together subtle, personal impressions of moving through the city.
Jinlong Xu
Title: Circulation of Order
The work is formed of a transparent acrylic structure with two stacked chambers. A knotted rope moves slowly between them, passing through a bed of blue dust in the lower chamber. Through static attraction, fine particles adhere to the rope’s knots and are gradually carried upward. At the top, a system of pulleys repeatedly compresses the rope, releasing the dust so that it drifts downward and settles once more.
The process unfolds with extreme slowness. The movement of the dust is barely perceptible to the eye, yet over time the upper chamber begins to show visible traces of accumulation, while the dust mound below quietly diminishes. Change here is continuous but concealed, suggesting that order is never fixed.
Between ascent and descent, dust is only an echo of time.
Joe Furlonger
Title: China -Road to Ming Tombs
This painting came about from finding some 1998 sketchbook drawings and photos from my first trip to China.
John R Walker
Title: Dawn, Oratunga
My work is mostly about the experience of walking in the landscape, its geology, flora and historical human impact. My standard way of working is to go out and spend a day or two drawing and painting in Chinese concertina books while walking around the place capturing my immediate responses. In some ways my work evokes Chinese scrolls and screens, elements of the landscape floating in the picture plane, paint strokes almost calligraphic representing the elemental forces of this place. A friend brought back a concertina book from China many years ago and this gift has become an elemental part of my practice and I use these extended drawing books daily. I am lucky that this same friend has taken some of my works on paper back to China mounted as scrolls. The opportunity to work in China would thus be the completion of a cycle that is inspiring.
Jun Chen
Title: Near Winton
I am an Australia artist who was born in China. I graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, China in 1986. I have been living and working in Australia since I immigrated in Australia in 1990. Moreover, I achieved Master of Fine Arts in Queensland University of Technology in 1996. I always add Chinese topic in my paintings, which introduce Chinese lives to Australians.
I also had exhibitions in China with other Australian artists to show Australian artwork to Chinese. I love to do landscape paintings, especially Australian landscape. I travelled to the central of Australia several times. The mysterious natural landscape attracts me and inspires me. I did this painting 'Mountain Reflection' to express my strong feeling of the nature. The dark red mountains reflected in the water bring peace to the worlds. Chinese love lilies, it is also my sense of longing for homeland.
Juz Kitson
Title: Shadows make the light shine brighter
From 2012 to 2022, I lived and worked in Jingdezhen, China, maintaining a permanent studio within the historic centre of porcelain production. This extended immersion enabled sustained collaboration with master artisans and specialised workshops, through which I developed advanced technical expertise and a deep understanding of porcelain’s historical, cultural, and industrial frameworks.
Operating within Jingdezhen’s established systems of collective making fundamentally shaped my approach to materiality and collaboration, and fostered a long-term cross-cultural relationship with China that remains central to my practice. The work ‘Shadows…’ exemplifies this exchange through technical ambition and material intensity, pushing porcelain beyond traditional expectations.
The work draws on the aftermath of wildfire in the Australian landscape and its charred remnants. Through this innovative process of making, I position porcelain as a contemporary sculptural medium capable of addressing environmental force, transformation, and resilience, situating my practice at the forefront of contemporary ceramics in Australia and internationally.
Leon Zhan
Title: Everyone has a tree
Landscape, weather, and time and for me it functions as an anchor to place, memory, and home. Painted from lived observation, the tree becomes both a physical subject and a spiritual axis. I approach the image through a hybrid language, using Chinese calligraphy brushes and ink-informed oil techniques to describe bark, leaves, and atmosphere. Rather than rendering detail, I allow form to emerge through breath, pressure, and restraint.
The hanging leaves are treated as calligraphic gestures, while the trunk holds the composition as a vertical spine. Embedded within the scene is a faint jade guardian lion, a recurring motif in my practice. Half-emerging from mist, it acts as a quiet witness, linking cultural inheritance, protection, and the experience of living between Eastern and Western worlds.
Lin Pan
Title: Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks takes the body as a kind of landscape. The painting is built from two main reds, one darker and one lighter. In an abstract way, they hint at the rising forms of a woman’s breasts and also point to a sense of life and energy. My focus, however, is how the body, like many living forms in nature, carries a basic symmetry. This symmetry is not only something we see with our eyes, but also something we feel from within our own experience and perception. For me, landscape, like the body, is not just what appears in front of us. It is a field made from many sensations, rhythms, and changes, always moving and growing. In this work I try to show how body and nature reflect one another, and how each can give shape and meaning to the other.
Lindy Lee
Title: The Birth of Fire
The Birth of Fire marks the deep connection between birth and death, and the natural elements that constitute our world.
The elemental experience of the Australian landscape, through bushfire and flood, fire and water, is imprinted into the material of this work, a piece of wood foraged from a bushfire in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, near my home.
Across the surface are thousands of interconnected concentric circles, referencing the Net of Indra, a Buddhist story describing the universe as an infinite web that connects everything and that we can never fall out of. At each tie in the net, each knot, there is a beautiful jewel, unique and utterly irreplaceable. This story is a tale of absolute connection and belonging.