MAKE Award: Biennial Prize for Innovation in Australian Craft and Design

The MAKE Award: Biennial Prize for Innovation in Australian Craft and Design is a major national craft and design innovation award initiated by Australian Design Centre.

The 2025 MAKE Award winner is Cinnamon Lee for her work NOCTUA. Second prize goes to Jake Rollins for SOFA1 and highly commended is Roseanne Bartley for A Poetry of Rings: The Mulga Alphabet.

The winner of the MAKE Award receives a cash prize of $35,000 with a second prize of $10,000, making it the richest non-acquisitive prize for craft and design in Australia.

The MAKE Award showcases designer/makers working across all related disciplines including ceramics, glass, furniture/woodwork, metalwork, textiles and fibre, and contemporary jewellery.

Finalists are designer/makers with a high level of skill either working with materials that are new to their practice, new or traditional materials, or working in new and innovative ways.

The MAKE Award is an initiative of the Australian Design Centre.

Exhibitors: Jin Ah Jo, Ash Allen, Julie Bartholomew, Roseanne Bartley, Emma Bugg, Melissa Cameron, Scott Chaseling, Vita Cochran, Kirsten Coelho, Zara Collins, Laura Deakin, Lynda Draper, Dan Elborne, Caren Elliss, Jason Fitzgerald, Neville French, Jess Hall, Kirsten Haydon, Anke Kindle, Phong Lai, Cinnamon Lee, Noel Murphy, Sharon Peoples, Nicole Polentas, Jake Rollins, Jennifer Robertson, Hugo Rucks, Jeffrey Sarmiento, Lotte Schwerdtfeger, Gabbee Stolp, Bolaji Teniola, Jane Theau, Blanche Tilden, Alice van Meurs and Sarrita King, Zoe Veness and Melinda Young.

Jake Rollins, SOFA 3744, 2025
Photo: Connor Patterson

Ngayuku ngura Ankunytja - My Places to Be

Anne Thompson’s work reflects a deep connection to the past and present, shaped by growing up at Black Hill #2, her family’s homeland. Drawing on bush life, nature, and her surrounding environment, her work evokes the quiet of home, inviting reflection on how we care for the present while honouring the past and the cultural knowledge passed down through generations. A leading ceramic artist and advocate for the APY community, Anne’s practice is grounded in culture, community, and the belief that living well together comes from listening, respect, and remembering our ancestors.

“My work really understands about life taking place in time of the past and present. I don’t see what the future brings because you can’t see it yet. It’s peace, body, mind and soul and we all have to think about what’s right and wrong. I love peace. Peace is quiet, it allows you to believe in yourself and to follow up the things you want in your life. Places of noise are the city and traffic. At home, bush life, nature and the environment are all around me and my home is peaceful. I hope we can all get along well for our future and that we look after what’s happening now and think about the good memories that happened in the past and use it to follow up by living the way our ancestors did.”

Anne Thompson, Strong Family Connection, Image: Connor Patterson

Nadege Desgenetez

JamFactory and partner Carrick Hill present the 2026 FUSE Glass Artist Residency Exhibition showcasing Melbourne based glass artist Nadège Desgenétez

Awarded biennially in alternate years to the FUSE Glass Prize, the FUSE Glass Artist Residency aims to create significant opportunities for established, mid-career artists working in glass. Valued at more than $20,000 the residency provides studio access in JamFactory’s Glass Studio and a solo exhibition at Historic House Museum and Garden, Carrick Hill.

Nadege Desgenetez's work is inspired by her experience of migration, and the ways in which feelings of connection to, and dislocation from place can coexist. Her recent sculptures in glass and mixed media explore how to relay and mediate embodied experiences of inter-relation and distance. Abstract blown glass forms merge body and tree, soft and hard, flow and stillness... Surfaces, colours and reflections echo natural phenomena. Desgenetez draws on the movement of her body in making, the processes of glass blowing, combined with mirroring, carving, polishing, and sanding to find ambiguous forms and mine the optical and tactile qualities inherent to the medium. The works seek to engage the viewer physically, to be encountered, through shifting reflections and dynamic display. Most recently, following the disruptions of the COVID years, Desgenetez became interested in the contemporary primacy of sight, notably in the ways in which screens and lenses mediate our encounter with the natural world, and each other, near and far.

Nadege Desgenetez, Orb, 2018. Photo courtesy of the artist.