Ceramicist Alfred Lowe wins 2025 Rigg Design Prize

The 2025 Rigg Design Prize has been awarded to Adelaide-based Aranda artist Alfred Lowe, whose placing ceramic set up, You and me, us by no means half, took out the $40,000 prize in what’s broadly considered Australia’s most prestigious accolade for up to date design. The announcement was made because the tenth version of the triennial prize opened on 18 September.

This yr’s prize targeted on Australian designers below 35 working throughout various disciplines together with ceramics, glass, lighting, furnishings, metalwork, jewelry, and textiles. Every of the 35 invited individuals debuted new and impressive work within the exhibition, providing perception into the concepts and processes shaping the way forward for Australian design.

Lowe’s work, comprising two large-scale figurative vessels over one metre tall, combines rugged clay with smooth raffia parts. The work explores the tensions between love and hate, ache and pleasure, and the enduring ties of group and Nation.

“We, the jury, are impressed by the bold scale and emotional resonance of Alfred’s giant, figurative ceramic vessels,” the jury said. “Whereas grounded in ceramic traditions, Alfred’s work pushes decisively into up to date territory – expressing his Aranda tradition and id in types that enliven the storied historical past of design on this nation.”

Lowe was unanimously chosen by a jury of main design professionals and previous Rigg Prize winners together with jewelry designer Marian Hosking; industrial designer Adam Goodrum; designers Paul Hecker and Hamish Guthrie of Hecker Guthrie; and Simone LeAmon, curator of Modern Design and Structure at NGV.

“As an early-career practitioner, his work is creative, achieved and joyful, and alerts a voice in up to date Australian design with the facility to contribute to worldwide conversations on design and making in significant and enduring methods,” the jury concluded.

Chosen from throughout Australia, the finalists invited by the NGV to compete for the $40,000 Rigg Design Prize are Patrick Adeney (VIC, Furnishings), Kartika Laili Ahmad (WA, Lighting), Ella Badu (VIC, Jewelry), Walter Brooks (NT, Object Design), Dallissa Brown (NT, Ceramics), Andrew Carvolth (SA, Furnishings), Nicola Charlesworth and Kim Stanek of Object Density (NSW, Furnishings), Samantha Dennis (TAS, Jewelry), Carly Tarkari Dodd (SA, Jewelry), Hamish Donaldson (VIC, Glass), Jack Fearon of Fearon (QLD, Furnishings), Olive Gill-Hille (WA, Furnishings), Marcel Hoogstad Hay (SA, Glass), Katherine Hubble (VIC, Jewelry), Jay Jermyn (QLD, Lighting), Nicolette Johnson (QLD, Ceramics), Lavinia Ketchell (QLD, Object Design), Claudia Lau (VIC, Ceramics), Nicole Lawrence (VIC, Furnishings), Julian Leigh Might (VIC, Furnishings), Alfred Lowe (SA, Ceramics), Marlo Lyda (NSW, Lighting), Claire Markwick-Smith (SA, Furnishings), Simone Namunjdja (NT, Object Design), Nathan Nhan (ACT, Ceramics), Annie Paxton (VIC, Furnishings), Douglas Powell of Duzi Objects (WA, Furnishings), Amy Search engine optimization and Shahar Cohen of Second Version (NSW, Furnishings), Emma Shepherd of Sundance Studio (VIC, Weaving), Shahn Stewart of Alchemy Orange (VIC, Object Design), Dalton Stewart (VIC, Furnishings), Georgie Szymanski (VIC, Furnishings), Kohl Tyler (VIC, Ceramics), and Isaac Williams (TAS, Furnishings).

The Rigg Design Prize is awarded each three years and comes with a $40,000 non-acquisitive money prize. Established in 1994, the prize honours the legacy of the late Colin Rigg and has recognised over 100 Australian designers throughout a variety of disciplines.

The Rigg Design Prize 2025 will be on show from 19 September 2025 to February 2026 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Fed Sq., Melbourne.