NSW Artist Wins $100K Art Prize For Work Inspired By 2024 Floods

New South Wales-based artist Sophie Cape has been announced as the winner of the 2025 Hadley’s Art Prize for her dynamic, mixed-media work Thunder shifts the shivering sands.

One of Australia’s most lucrative art awards, the annual acquisitive prize is awarded to the most outstanding portrayal of the Australian landscape, with the winner receiving a prize of $100,000.

Cape said she was honoured to be selected from the finalists.

“Winning the Hadley’s Art Prize is a lifeline for me and my practice,” she said. “The process of making my work is the most exciting part for me, immersing myself physically and emotionally in the landscape and letting it speak through the materials.

Formerly a professional athlete, Cape was drawn to art after years of injuries competing. Her practice is deeply tied to the raw forces of nature and the physicality of the body, and she often immerses herself in the landscape through the use of locally-sourced natural materials, such as soil, rust and charcoal, to render instinctual acts of expression. 

Her winning piece, Thunder shifts the shivering sands, was created in Southern NSW after the 2024 floods and subsequent landslides. Cape worked within a soaked landscape of rust-stained floodwaters and blood-stained soil, offering a portrait of the Australian landscape in all its power and poetry. 

“I created Thunder shifts the shivering sands in the landscape after the floods in Southern NSW last year, exposing it to the chaos of the elements and working with soil, rust and debris, materials transformed by water and weather,” she said. “This painting is a portrait of survival and decay, beauty and destruction.”

“An honest record of environmental upheaval” say judges

The judging panel commended Cape for her resonant portrayal of the Australian landscape, and the almost primal energy she brought to her work.

“Her work is a strong embodied, site-responsive, and honest record of environmental upheaval, of land torn by flood and landslide,” they said. “Combining the gathering of raw and found materials from the environment with the expressive force of the artist’s body, it exults in this confluence, melding matter, natural marks and a perceptible, visceral relationship between human presence in the non-human world.”

Alongside as the Major Prize, there is also a Residency Prize valued at $10,000, won this year by Queensland’s Denise (De) Lamby, a Packing Room Prize valued at $1000, and a $2500 People’s Choice Award,

“The Hadley’s Art Prize brings a rich and diverse range of artworks together, many of which we wouldn’t otherwise get to experience in Tasmania,” said curator of the prize, Dr Amy Jackett. “There are some fascinating textures and techniques in the work of this year’s finalists. One of the highlights for me is meeting the artists and having them meet one another. I’m excited that this year most of the finalists are coming down to be part of the opening celebrations.”

A public program of events and talks will run alongside the exhibition, including Artist Talks this coming Saturday, August 30, with a number of the year’s Hadley’s Art Prize finalists. More information on the public program here.