Gold rush: Berlin-based artist scoops Rocky prize
Karla Marchesi’s colourful floral painting style has just won her Queensland’s richest painting prize.
It is hard to comprehend the impact a major prize can have on an artist. Karla Marchesi, Brisbane-born and now living and working in Berlin, has just won the state’s richest painting prize – the $50,000 Gold Award – for her hyper-colourful and visually decadent paintings.
It was not just the financial boost that resonated so strongly for this artist, but the validation it provided for her painting practice.
“It has been a long 20 years of rigorous practice, largely alone in the studio,” Marchesi says. “As an artist you have so many different metrics of success, and you normally keep them modest, containing expectations.
“First, the invitation to exhibit in the prestigious Gold Award at Rockhampton Museum of Art felt like success in and of itself. Then the joy to see your work in a museum context, installed in such a beautiful space, was thrilling.”
Receiving the 2026 Gold Award represents a significant career coup for the expatriate Queenslander. The Gold Award is an acquisitive biennial invitational art prize that has been run since 2012 under the auspices of the Rockhampton Museum of Art.
It is named for philanthropist and educator Moya Gold (1928-2000), whose bequest created the award (which is also supported through the Rockhampton Museum of Art Philanthropy Group and the Rockhampton Regional Council). This year is the seventh Gold Award, with the prize now recognised Australia-wide.
The exhibition invites eight contemporary painters to present a small group of works.
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Rockhampton regional councillor Drew Wickerson says the “Gold Award is about more than recognising artistic excellence”.
“It is also about building a lasting cultural legacy for future generations and providing access to remarkable works of art, right here in our region,” adds Wickerson.
This year’s cohort is Lydia Balbal (Mangala Country, Great Sandy Desert, WA); Betty Chimney (Yankunytjatjara, SA); Wayilkpa Maymuru (Maŋgalili clan, Yirrkala, NT); David Paulson (Leeds-born, Australia-based); Lorna Quinn (Melbourne/London); Telly Tu’u (Wellington-born, Sydney-based); Tricky Walsh (Victoria-born but US-based); and Marchesi (Brisbane/Berlin). These eight artists present a total of 21 paintings with the luxury of space, lighting and engaged audiences.
These works range from the dark abstracted cultural explorations of Telly Tu’u’s paintings to imaginative drawings in watercolour by David Paulson. Then there are poetic and restrained ancestral narratives featuring a stippled background from Yolŋu artist Wayilkpa Maymuru, and the stunning abstracted depictions of her Country from Betty Chimney (Iwantja Arts).
Lydia Balbal’s images of jila (living water) describe strong woman’s Country from Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert in lyrical colour assays, while Tricky Walsh’s Stealth Mode are kaleidoscopic portals of colour and pattern that engage with technological change. Lorna Quinn’s intimately sized works depict her vision of the natural realm as “containers that aim to exteriorise and then subsume a fantasy of wholeness”.
The award was judged by Jenny Watson (herself an influential painter for 40 years, and Creative Australia Award winner for Visual Arts in 2025), who described the task of selecting The Gold Award winner as “challenging”. Ultimately, Watson chose Marchesi’s Wasted Waiting (2025), a strong example of the artists’ fecund, floral “impossible bouquet” paintings (influenced by 17th century Dutch painting).
This work, characteristic of the series, draws together flora and fauna in a seething and potent allegory. Large leaves with engorged veins jostle with the exposed flesh of ripe fruit, flowers and fungi, in bright pink, orange, yellow and green, with a cloudy, indeterminate sky behind.
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For Marchesi, these works “underscore the complexities, contradictions, violence and vulnerability of our modern age”. The light and colour in her work strikes a chord in Central Queensland.
“The colour stories in my work, my saturated palette, speak a language that doesn’t quite land in Europe,” she says. “It is an expression of place and makes sense to audiences here in Queensland. They understand the light I describe in my work.”
Watson identified in Marchesi’s work “extraordinary dexterity and vision … within a sophisticated contemporary practice that reaches across history, drawing on artistic traditions to create paintings that are both compelling and hypnotic.”
“Having successfully navigated the significant transition of relocating to Europe, she has continued to build an impressive international career while maintaining a distinctive artistic voice,” Watson says.
Marchesi is represented in Australia by Jan Manton Art in Brisbane and Nicholas Thompson in Melbourne, both of whom were delighted to see her dedication recognised. Manton, who has just shown new work by Marchesi (Till and Toil, which closed July 11), notes that “a major prize like this affirms career direction”.
“Art can be a lonely career. This type of recognition and the interest it engages is powerful – and visible to both collectors and institutions,” Manton says.
Adds Thompson: “Over nearly 20 years of exhibiting, Karla has continually refined both her painterly skill and distinctive visual language, and this award recognises that sustained commitment.”
“It is significant, too, that she has been selected from such an outstanding group of painters,” Thompson says. “The award will further elevate her profile, create new opportunities and mark an important milestone in an already impressive artistic career.”
Marchesi says much of what she does is produced in isolation.
“I have centred my life (on) my painting practice, choosing to live and work in my studio, indulging my more obsessive working habits, painting daily until all hours of the morning,” she says. “This opportunity to present a survey of my work to new audiences fills your battery so much.
“My art is meant to exist in space for people. The award gives me a chance introduce my work to broader audiences, alongside a chance to reflect upon what I have achieved at this stage of my career.”
The Gold Award continues on show at Rockhampton Museum of Art until September 6.
rmoa.com.au/Collection-Exhibitions/Exhibitions/The-Gold-Award-2026
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