A FORMER lecturer at the ANU School of Art has been named as the recipient of the $80,000 Bulgari Art Award.

Art Gallery of New South Wales deputy director and director of collections, Suhanya Raffel, announced that Jude Rae had won the award for her painting “SL 359 2016” and Rae has declared herself “overjoyed and honoured”.

Now in its fifth year, The Bulgari Art Award is judged by Gallery Trustees and senior curatorial staff, and is awarded annually to support mid-career Australian painters. Sponsored by Bulgari, the award consists of $50,000 for the acquisition of a painting for the Gallery’s collection and a residency for the artist in Italy valued at $30,000.

AGNSW director Michael Brand said, “Jude’s paintings have accurately been described as slow-burning. They take a venerable and familiar form such as the still life, and draw the viewer into a deeper contemplation of the nature of perception, consciousness and being, through canvases of quiet, meditative beauty.”

With an exhibition history spanning over 30 years Rae’s paintings have been exhibited in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the USA.

While in Canberra she was a tenant and board member of ANCA and Artist in Residence at both the School of Art and Megalo. In Canberra 2005 Helen Maxwell Gallery exhibited her work as “Interiors II”.  In 2007 she was commissioned to paint Professor Frank Fenner by the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. Then  in 2010, Canberra Museum and Gallery staged the solo show, “Jude Rae: Still Lifes”, described by the “Citynews” art reviewer as “lovingly rendered.”

Head curator of Australian Art at AGNSW, Wayne Tunnicliffe, said “SL 359” was a welcome addition to the Gallery collection,” adding, “Rae has embraced the grand tradition and history of still life painting and merged it with abstraction and formal concerns – her deceptively straightforward composition for SL 359 is an exploration of mass, matter and surface.”

Jude Rae is the fifth recipient of the Bulgari Art award which was first launched by Bulgari in 2012. Past recipients of the Bulgari Art Award include Ildiko Kovacs, Daniel Boyd, Jon Cattapan and Michael Zavros.

Jude Rae’s “SL 359” is now exhibited in the Entrance Court of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Open daily 10am–5pm, Wednesdays until 10pm.Free. artgallery.nsw.gov.au