The John Glover Art Prize is one of Australia’s most signficant painting awards.
Story Kirsty McKenzie Photo Kelly Berne
Hobart artist Aisha Sherman-Noth was in the supermarket with her partner when she took the call alerting her that she was this year’s winner of the prestigious $80,000 John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian landscape painting. “It was a bit hard to focus on grocery shopping after that,” she says. “But we did buy a bottle of wine and an ice cream at the wharf before we went home and made spaghetti carbonara for dinner.”
Aisha’s work Weeping Birches on the Avenue was the unanimous winner for the judges – director of the Melbourne Art Fair Melissa Loughnan, gallerist Steven Joyce, and tattooist, artist and National Art School painting lecturer Leslie Rice – who selected the 24-year-old’s entry from 42 finalists from Australia and overseas. The oil painting shows the view from Aisha’s studio at the front of her house overlooking the Brooker Highway, one of Hobart’s main arterial roads. “I’m interested in how nature intersects with human activity,” Aisha says. “The birches and poplars have been planted along the busy highway to soften its impact and make it more attractive. I’m keen to explore that dynamic further.”
Aisha graduated from the University of Tasmania with a double degree in fine arts and plant science at the end of last year. “I was going to do an honours year in science, but my inner self told me to take a year off to pursue my painting,” she says. “I didn’t expect it to pay off the way it has.”
This story excerpt is from Issue #160
Outback Magazine: April/May 2025
