An exhibition of Glover Prize winners looks at landscape

A collection of winners of the richest annual prize for landscape painting in Australia goes on show at Gallery 2, QVMAG, at Royal Park in Launceston from February 9 to March 24. Since 2004, the Glover Prize has been awarded to the best contemporary landscape painting of Tasmania, which may seem a straightforward brief but the prize invites artists to make free play of the terms ‘landscape’, ‘painting’ and ‘Tasmania’. Out of some 40 finalists comes a winner, who receives $40,000 and a bronze marquette of colonial artist John Glover, a contemporary of Turner and Constable who was already a successful artist in England when he came to what was then called Van Diemen’s Land in 1831 to settle near Evandale, 20 kilometres south of Launceston.