A mixed-medium work incorporating beeswax sculptures, sand-filled fabric forms, photographs and stained glass has taken out this year’s prestigious Ramsay Art Prize.
Heavy Grit, a piece that explores themes of queer intimacy and desire, earned Jack Ball the $100,000 prize – the most generous in the country for artists under 40.
Resisting a particular artform, Ball’s work is fluid, embracing multiple forms to create a large-scale immersive installation where viewers can trace their own connections and interpretations of the work.
The Perth-born, Sydney-based artist developed Heavy Grit in response to a collection of scrapbooks held by the Australian Queer Archives, including press clippings from the 1950s to 1970s that referenced trans lives.
A record number of entries were received for this year’s prize, with more than 500 artists from around the country submitting their best work created over the past year.
In 2025, the judging panel was comprised of leading Australian artist Michael Zavros; 2025 Archibald Prize winner and recipient of the 2017 Ramsay Art Prize’s People’s Choice Prize Julie Fragar; and Emma Fey, Deputy Director, AGSA.
The judges were unanimous in their selection of Ball’s work as the winning piece, saying that it "impressed us with its experimental processes and sophisticated creative resolve".
"The work evokes a sensual response to the substance and aesthetics of the Australian Queer Archives to which the work refers, while proposing new possibilities for how we understand those archives in relation to contemporary culture and experience," they said.
"We were particularly struck by the installation's restless, kinetic quality that refuses definition and creates an open opportunity to connect individually with the materials, forms and images the work deploys."
AGSA Director Jason Smith said that the Ramsay Art Prize sets out to elevate and accelerate careers for contemporary Australian artists.
"From a record number of entries in 2025, Heavy Grit by Jack Ball perfectly captures what the Ramsay Art Prize aims to offer artists – a platform to present their most ambitious work, unrestrained in scale and medium," Mr Smith said.
Established in the name of South Australia’s leading cultural philanthropists James Ramsay AO and Diana Ramsay AO, the Ramsay Art Prize is an acquisitive art prize for contemporary Australian artists.
Presented by AGSA and supported in perpetuity by the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, the Ramsay Art Prize is held every two years with the winning work being acquired into AGSA’s collection.
All works selected as finalists will be exhibited in a major exhibition at AGSA from 31 May until 31 August 2025.
Jack Ball’s work will now be acquired into AGSA’s collection, joining works by past recipients Sarah Contos (2017), Vincent Namatjira (2019), Kate Bohunnis (2021) and Ida Sophia (2023).
