For Muslim artists around Australia, this exhibition offers a valued platform from which they can showcase their talents and exhibit their works with no binding theme beyond being an artist who identifies as both Muslim and Australian. This results in a rare perspective on the creative field of emerging and established artists across the nation entering original works created within the last 12 months. Contributing artists — new migrants, second and third-generation Australians from diverse communities — display the diversity of the Australian Muslim experience.

This year the IMA is honoured to have partnered with La Trobe University in presenting the Australian Muslim Artists exhibition. This partnership is born out of a commitment to shared values, including strengthening cultural awareness and social inclusion through education, research and the arts.

With their support, the Museum is pleased to introduce the Australian Muslim Artists Art Prize, an acquisitive prize with a $15,000 cash component. The AMA Art Prize recipient, selected from this year’s shortlisted artists will be announced on Thursday 12 September at the official opening.

A panel of judges including independent experts and community representative considered a high volume of artist submissions and have shortlisted 13 works.

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Judges

Dr. Stefano Carboni

Dr. Stefano Carboni is an internationally recognised curator and scholar of Persian and Islamic art. He has served as Curator and Administrator of the Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as Visiting Professor of Islamic Art at the Bard Center of New York University, as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo, and mostly recently as Director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. His many catalogues and books include The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Ilkhanid Painting (2015); Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797 (2007); and The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Arts and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (2002), which was awarded the College Art Association of America’s Alfred H. Barr Prize for outstanding museum publication in that year.

Dr. Kent Wilson

Dr. Kent Wilson is a contemporary art curator, artist, writer and exhibition-maker working in Melbourne, Kyneton and Bendigo, Australia. He is the Senior Curator at La Trobe Art Institute and Co-Director of Kyneton Contemporary Inc. Working across a variety of media, Kent has exhibited his own artwork at commercial galleries, public galleries and artist-run-spaces. He is a writer published in art journals in print and online, and is the editor of a new book about the Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial called Force Fields: Art, Architecture and Audience to published in November.

Sherene Hassan OAM (community representative)

Sherene Hassan is the Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Islamic Museum of Australia (IMA). She served as vice president, and executive committee member of the Islamic Council of Victoria for eight years. To date she has conducted over 1000 information sessions on Islam to diverse audiences ranging from the Flying Fruit Fly Circus School to the Australian Federal Police. She has been involved in intercultural dialogue since 2001 and is passionate about building bridges with the wider community.

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