Mountain ash trees feature in Glover winning landscape

South Australia-based artist Datsun Tran has been announced the winner of the Glover Prize 2026 for his entry titled “The giants are falling” and paintings of Longford and Mt Wellington have also featured during judging. 

The winner of the 42 finalists for the Glover Prize 2026 was announced today, March 6 and artworks will be showcased and available for purchase during the Glover Prize Exhibition at the historic Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale, running from Saturday, March 7 to Sunday, March 15.

Mr Tran’s ink painting – a tribute to Tasmania’s mountain ash stands – draws awareness to their susceptivity to fire as the climate changes.

“Chinese incense, also known as “joss sticks”, are burnt in ceremonial rituals where the rising smoke is used to communicate prayers and blessings between the living and the dead,” Mr Tran said.

“I used joss sticks to burn into the paper as a tribute to Tasmania’s mountain sh, the world’s tallest flowering plant.

“Seventeen of the largest trees have already been destroyed by fire between 2003 and 2019.

“My prayer is that we are able to make the necessary changes, so that these elders can overcome the current climate emergency.”

Tran has won $80,000 and a bronze maquette of colonial artist, John Glover, after whom the Glover Prize is named.

Two other finalist artworks have been Highly Commended by the Glover Prize Judges. Both Graham Wilson’s “Kunanyi Tors” and Amanda Johnson’s “Colonial Heat 2: Panninher Country near Longford” were recognised by the judges.

Lead judge Jason Smith’s, alongside judges Andy Dinan and Katie Barron, official statement addresses the winning and highly commended artworks:

 “Firstly, we wish to thank each artist in this year’s exhibition for the conceptual richness, formal rigour, and technical, material brilliance of their works. Every artist exhibiting in this 2026 Glover Prize is in command of their medium yet simultaneously clearly open and receptive to where their medium might take them. It was, therefore, especially rewarding and unsettlingly challenging to arrive at our final three artists, and, ultimately, the recipient of the Prize,’ Mr Smith said.

“As three very different people, we were intrigued to discuss and tease out why it was that Datsun Tran’s painting ‘The giants are falling’ drew each of us back, and with each longer viewing revealed its aesthetic refinement, its quietly brave material experimentation, and its poetry and subtle environmental politics.

“Tran’s confident and energised ink painting – a tribute to Tasmania’s Mountain Ash stands - is realised with a remarkable economy of means, and this imbues the painting with its visual and expressive power. Tran’s ink and scorched paperwork honours ancient painting tradition and ancient landscape, yet it is an utterly contemporary work redolent of the here and now, and it encapsulates so many of our collective and urgent concerns with the state of our natural world and the competing forces that are shaping it.

“We congratulate Highly Commended artists Graham Wilson and Amanda Johnson for the visual sophistication and intellectual potency of their works.”

As part of the Glover Prize 2026, two additional awards are up for grabs – the People’s Choice Award and the Children’s Choice Award. 

These awards will be decided on the last day of the exhibition, Sunday, March 15. 

The artists with the most votes will be awarded prize money - $3000 for the People’s Choice Award winner and $500 for the Children's Choice Award winner.

Founded in 2004, the Glover Prize is recognised as Australia’s leading landscape art award. It honours the finest contemporary landscape painting of Tasmania created in the past 12 months.