The Neil Balnaves Fellowship

Mosman Art Gallery and The Balnaves Foundation are pleased to announce artist Mitch Cairns as the inaugural recipient of The Neil Balnaves Fellowship. 

 Valued at $80,000 and in honour of the late Neil Balnaves AO, this is a major initiative to support the development of a significant piece of research or creative endeavour over a two-year period. 

 Cairns will develop and present a new exhibition that connects three sites of artistic and poetic significance: Little Sparta, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden sculpture in Dunsyre, Scotland; Mosman Art Gallery’s Grand Hall; and the Mosman Art Trail, which brings to life The Balnaves Gift – one of Australia’s most important collections of Impressionist and early twentieth-century painting. 

 This is the first of two Neil Balnaves Fellowships to be awarded. Applications for the second Neil Balnaves Fellowship will open in mid 2027. 

 Mitch Cairns said: “As an artist whose practice is underpinned by a love of the poetic and poetic values, the mixing of language and language-as-visual cue, the support for such a focused creative project is a refreshing and inspiring opportunity for me. This fellowship would come at a crucial moment in my career, as I celebrate my twenty years of practice with the opportunity to meaningfully consolidate these related artistic aims of my practice with an ambitious presentation in The Grand Hall of Mosman Art Gallery, a new publication and with the valued support of The Neil Balnaves Fellowship.”