Jann Medlicott Award for Contemporary Art winner George Watson. Photo / Tink Lockett
Artist George Watson has been named the recipient of the 2026 Jann Medlicott Award for Contemporary Art, a new national accolade recognising significant contributions to Aotearoa’s contemporary art landscape.
The $30,000 prize, facilitated by Toi Tauranga Art Gallery and generously supported by the Acorn Foundation, celebrates a single artwork or body of work that has made a critical impact within the past year.
The award aims to uplift early- to mid-career contemporary artists, as well as senior artists exploring new mediums.
Watson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Mutunga) was honoured for her 2025 exhibition Apologia, presented at Wellington’s Robert Heald Gallery.
The show examined invasion, ancestry and settler identity through carefully chosen materials including wool bale sacking, pins, cultivated sea pearls and paraffin wax.
As part of the award, Watson will stage a new exhibition at Toi Tauranga Art Gallery in November 2026.
The 2026 judging panel comprised Andrew Clifford, director of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery; Sophie Davis, director of Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery; and John Vea, an Ōtautahi-based artist working across sculpture, video and performance.
In a joint statement, the judges acknowledged the challenge and privilege of selecting the inaugural award recipient.
“One criterion that sparked significant discussion was that the artist must be ‘rising in prominence’. While this could be interpreted as emerging, we felt it suggests something more nuanced – an artist whose practice is gaining momentum, becoming more visible, more confident in its intentions,” they said.
“Although George has been practising for some time, we focused on her work created within the award’s timeframe and were especially struck by her solo exhibition, Apologia. Known for a sculptural and installation practice that critically engages colonial narratives and questions of cultural identity, Apologia fixes its gaze upon Pākehā settler identity, examining the architectures of nationhood and belonging, and what might be unrealised, suppressed or rendered invisible beneath these structures.”
Toi Tauranga Art Gallery director Sonya Korohina said the gallery is honoured to steward the new award.
“We are extremely grateful that this generous New Zealand art prize now lives within the Toi Tauranga Art Gallery kaupapa for our community,” she says. “Following our hugely celebrated reopening in November and a stunning opening season, we look forward to welcoming George Watson into our spaces and introducing her poignant and beautiful work to our visitors in November.”
Lori Luke, chief executive of the Acorn Foundation, paid tribute to the award’s namesake.
“Jann was a tireless supporter of the arts in the Bay of Plenty and beyond. This new contemporary art prize sits alongside her coveted Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards as two of the most significant prizes for New Zealand artists.
“Gifted in perpetuity, this prize strives to uplift, inspire and support contemporary artists from Aotearoa long into the future.”
Watson said receiving the inaugural award is a profound honour.
“I am incredibly honoured to be awarded the first iteration of the Jann Medlicott Award for Contemporary Art. It has been a privilege to meet some of Jann’s close friends and hear more about her love of, and ongoing support for, the arts in Aotearoa.
“This generous award will undoubtedly have a hugely positive impact on my work and the development of my artistic practice, as well as the practices of future recipients. Thanks also to the judges, the Acorn Foundation and Toi Tauranga Art Gallery. I really look forward to working towards a new exhibition at the gallery in November.”
Watson holds a Bachelor of Media Arts from the Waikato Institute of Technology, an Honours degree in Art History from the University of Auckland, and an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts.
In 2019, she completed the Maumaus Independent Study Programme in Lisbon, and in 2024 she was an artist-in-residence at the McCahon House Artist Residency.