The Royal Queensland Art Society is delighted to announce the judges for the first Queen’s Wharf Brisbane Art Prize.
Run in partnership with Queen’s Wharf Brisbane, the prize brings new opportunities to Queensland Artists and celebrates the unique city of Brisbane and the surrounding areas.
Dr Kay Kane, FRQAS
Kay completed her Bachelor of Fine Art at Central School of Art, London, practicing and exhibiting there until her return to Australia. She taught around Queensland while continuing to practice, as well as working towards gaining her Doctorate in Fine Art Painting, awarded in 2010.
While her practice embraces most genres, her enduring concern is with the exploration of the deep visual resonances between human and environmental forms. She has exhibited in major exhibitions in Australia and around the world. She is a past winner of the Queensland Figurative.
Kay has given papers around the world and is a sought-after judge for art awards. She was a founder of Salisbury Studios Inc. among others and served as President of the Royal Queensland Art Society. She was awarded a Certificate of Achievement by the Lord Mayor of Brisbane in 2019 and now works full-time as an artist in Marburg.
Jun Chen
Jun Chen (b. 1960, Guangzhou, China) emigrated to Australia in 1990 and has become one of Australia most prominent impasto painters.
Chen trained in Chinese brush painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts from 1982-86. In 1993, he moved to Brisbane and began a Masters of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) at Queensland University of Technology. During this time, he began to work with the oils for which he is now known.
Chen has been a regular finalist in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and in 2013 won the Tattersall’s Club Landscape Art Prize in Brisbane. Chen is represented in major Australian public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Chen also has his work held in public collections in China and Sweden, and in private collections throughout Australia and Asia.
Bruce Heiser
Former gallerist, Bruce Heiser, is a Brisbane based art dealer, valuer, and researcher with a particular interest in the work of Jon Molvig. He has been a registered valuer with the Commonwealth Government’s Cultural Gifts Program since 2005. His interest in researching the history of Central Queensland resulted in the publication of Tempting Dame Fortune: A Brief History of the Dee Gold Rush, Central Queensland (Koro Press) in 2018. In 2022 his book examining the final series of works produced by Molvig in 1967-68 prior to the artist’s premature death, Jon Molvig: The Tree of Man Paintings, was published (Koro Press & And Also Books).
