Jam Factory in Adelaide has announced Annette Blair as the winner of the 2026 Fuse Glass Prize, Australia and New Zealand’s richest prize for glass artists. Blair received the $20,000 non-acquisitive award for her work Remnants of time – In idleness while Adelaide-based artist Isobel Waters won the David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize for In the Absence of a Diagnosis.
The biennial prize, established in 2016, places a spotlight on glass as a contemporary art form and encourages artists to push the medium in new directions. This year’s finalists included 12 established artists and six emerging artists, selected by a judging panel made up of Tami Landis of the Corning Museum of Glass, Aimee Frodsham of Canberra Glassworks, JamFactory’s Dr Lee-Anne Hall, glass artist and 2024 winner Tom Moore, and JamFactory CEO Brian Parkes.
Blair, based in the Canberra region, works from Canberra Glassworks and her studio in Burra, New South Wales. Her practice is known for its technical precision and its focus on the emotional and material qualities of glass, with works that explore memory, place and transformation. She has also built a strong national and international profile as both an artist and a gaffer, making and teaching glassblowing and glass painting across Australia and overseas.
The judges praised Blair’s work for its scale, ambition and conceptual depth, saying it draws viewers into reflections on nostalgia, impermanence and transformation. They noted her ability to hold beauty and decay in tension, describing the piece as both visually striking and emotionally affecting.
Waters’ winning emerging work reflects a different but equally compelling direction. Her practice draws on her experience in health care, where she explores the physical and emotional realities of the human body. The judges said Waters’ work embraces complexity and experimentation, using glass to express tension, fragility and transformation in ways other materials cannot. Her win includes $5,000 in prize money and a professional development residency at JamFactory valued at a further $5,000.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
