Laura Allen has won the supreme award at the 2026 ILT Murihiku Art Awards for 34 years of Age, a work in porcelain.

The $8,000 prize was announced at a Friday evening function at He Waka Tuia in Invercargill earlier this month. The finalists' exhibition remains on show at the gallery, on the corner of Don and Kelvin streets, until 15 November.

Allen's work was chosen from 67 finalists spread across seven categories. The judges, Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History director Sarah McClintock and Julia Hutchins, co-director of Dunedin's Hutch Gallery, said the entries ranged across ceramics, acrylic, wood, textiles, jewellery, drawing and video.

Paul McLachlan took second prize, worth $4,000, for Knotgaarden, an oil, acrylic and embroidery work on linen. He also collected the $2,000 IPAG or SAS Membership Award for Sēam, an acrylic and oil painting on canvas.

Elizabeth Manson's acrylic portrait Andrew 1/10 won the $2,000 third prize.

Category winners

Mel McKenzie won the $2,000 Beattie McDowell Southland Award for The Green Heart, an oil and acrylic painting presented in a vintage frame.

The $1,000 Innovation Award went to Laire Purik for Jaanipäiv, a photographic work on parish cotton, and Nina Thoroughgood won the $500 Rangatahi Award for the mixed-media piece Time to Waste?

Prize money across the seven awards totals $19,500.

The judges said they did not compare the entries against one another, and that what they looked for was originality: work that made them linger, look again and ask questions. They said the strength of the field showed that "contemporary visual arts in Aotearoa is alive and well", and described entering awards as a brave thing for artists to do.

He Waka Tuia manager Sarah Brown said the exhibition was looking fantastic and the gallery was excited for visitors to see it for themselves. She said art connected people to one another, challenged perspectives and added richness to the places people called home.

The awards, which carry the Invercargill Licensing Trust's name, are one of the biggest fixtures on the Southland visual arts calendar, drawing entries in ceramics, painting, photography, textiles and video as well as work from young artists through the Rangatahi category.

He Waka Tuia is the transitional home of the Invercargill Public Art Gallery and Southland Museum and Art Gallery collections, run as a joint initiative between the two institutions.

The gallery is open from 10am to 5pm on weekdays and from 11am to 2.30pm at weekends.