Tasmanian artist Peter Bowles has won the 2025 Tom Malone Glass Art Prize for his contemplative glass work Quiescent Object: Kepler-186F, securing the $20,000 acquisitive award. The prize is Australia’s longest-running award dedicated to contemporary glass.
Bowles’ winning piece is a carefully crafted glass vessel made from neodymium and cobalt-tinted striking phosphate opal glass with layers of opaque coloured glass. The work is blown, cut, ground and finished with a hand-lapped pumice surface, creating a softly luminous form that holds light rather than reflecting it.
The artwork forms part of Bowles’ ongoing Quiescent Object series, which explores stillness, gravity and material restraint. Each piece in the series is named after a discovered exoplanet – in this case Kepler-186f – celestial bodies known not through direct imagery but through their gravitational effects on surrounding matter. For Bowles, the analogy mirrors the behaviour of glass, whose presence is perceived through varying states of transparency, translucency and opacity.
Rather than dramatic expression, the piece invites viewers to slow down and encounter form in a state of suspended stillness.
Judges Dante Marioni, Stefano Carboni and Robert Cook praised the work for its “extraordinarily quiet energy,” noting that its luminous surface appears both tranquil and suggestive of a universe in motion. They also highlighted Bowles’ technical mastery, from the subtle separation of colours to hidden details revealed beneath the base.
Ultimately, the judges said the work’s cohesion and beauty repeatedly drew them back, rewarding sustained viewing and embodying the refined possibilities of contemporary glass.
The winning work is currently on show at Linton and Kay Galleries in Cottesloe and the Art Gallery of Western Australia will acquire and exhibit the winning piece.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
