The Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award celebrates the diversity and strength of Australian textile art. The $40,000 acquisitive prize builds on Wangaratta's long and prominent history of textile manufacturing, and craft making. The biennial award furthers this unique tradition and social history by elevating and promoting the development of contemporary textile practice in Australia.
First held in 2009, the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award grew to $40,000 in its eighth iteration in 2023, thanks to the generous investment by local project partners, the Kyamba Foundation. The increase in prize money guarantees that the award remains a coveted national contemporary textile award of excellence.
Previous recipients of the award have included Sepideh Farzam, Gillian Bencke, Linda McLean and Cheryl Kennedy, John Parkes, Kate Just, Paul Yore, Patrick Snelling and Mandy Gunn.