Since 1951, The Blake Prize has engaged artists, nationally and internationally, with ideas of spirituality and religion. The prize takes its name from William Blake, the world-famous 18th Century artist, and poet who threaded the religious and artistic throughout his practice. Building on this history, The 87th Blake Prize continues to encourage contemporary artists of varied styles and religious and spiritual allegiances to create significant works of art, which engage in conversations and negotiations concerning spirituality, religion and/or belief.

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre has proudly presented The Blake Prize as a biennial event since 2016, ensuring the future of this landmark prize. Casula Powerhouse is ideally positioned in Liverpool, a community of people from over 150 different birthplaces, speaking over 140 languages with an equally diverse range of faith backgrounds. We are committed to supporting emerging and established artists to create work that reflect Australian communities.

CPAC will maintain the guiding principles of The Blake Prize, continuing to engage contemporary artists, both nationally and internationally, in conversations concerning faith, spirituality, religion, hope, humanity, social justice, belief and non – belief. The Blake Prize presents an aesthetic means of exploring the wider experience of spirituality and all this may entail through the visionary imagining of contemporary artists.

Dean Cross

Dean Cross is an artist primarily working across installation, sculpture and painting. Interested in the collisions of materials, ideas and histories, Cross is motivated by an understanding that his practice sits within a continuum of the oldest living culture on Earth – and enacts First Nations sovereignty through expanded contemporary art methodologies. His cross-disciplinary practice often confronts the legacies of modernism, rebalancing dominant cultural and social histories.

José Da Silva

José Da Silva is a curator and writer and is currently the Director of UNSW Galleries, where he has developed a dynamic program of contemporary Australian art and design since 2018. He is also the curator of the 2024 Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art. Between 2006 and 2018, he contributed to an ambitious program of exhibitions, commissions, acquisitions and projects at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, including a role in the curatoriums for five editions of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Selected curatorial projects include Gordon Hookey: A MURRIALITY (2022-24, with Liz Nowell and touring nationally); Jacobus Capone: Orisons (2022); Sam Smith: Capture (2021); The Colour Line: W. E. B Du Bois and Archie Moore (2021); Friendship as a Way of Life (2020, with Kelly Doley); Wansolwara: One Salt Water (2020, with Mikala Tai), and Gemma Smith: Rhythm Sequence (2019).

Professor Jay Johnston FAHA

Jay Johnston FAHA is Professor in Religion within the School of Humanities at the University of Sydney. She is a cross-disciplinary specialist who also works in the fields of Heritage, Art History and Practice, Conservation and Environment, and Nordic Studies.  Jay is a leader in conceptual and methodological innovation who has been influential in developing new subfields such as aesthetics of religion and subtle body studies. Her research examines visual and material culture with a particular focus on the interrelationship between ethics and aesthetics, concepts of materiality, embodiment and epistemology.