Louisa Chircop Australian, b. 1974
Born in Sydney, Chircop holds an Associate Diploma in Fine Arts from St George TAFE and was awarded the NSW State Commission medal for fine arts. She has won the Basil Muriel and Hooper Scholarship AGNSW. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours Class1 and a Master of Fine Arts Research degree in painting both from the College of Fine Arts UNSW assisted by an Australian Post Graduate Award Scholarship.
Chircop Is a multi award winning artist and has been a finalist in the Dobell Prize AGNSW; the Portia Geach Memorial Award exhibited at the SH Ervin Gallery; Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize at the Adelaide Perry Gallery PLC Sydney, Hazelhurst national Art on Paper Prize Hazelhurst Arts Centre, Paddington Art Prize and the Triennial McClelland Splash Contemporary Watercolour Award held at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery in Victoria Australia supported by the Fornari Bequest. Her work was acquired from the Kedumba Drawing Award for the Kedumba Collection of Australian Drawings which is considered one of the most significant and important collections in Australia. She’s won the James Gleeson Prize for Surrealism at Campbelltown Arts Centre twice, the FOH Hazelhurst Art on Paper
Award, the John Copes Portrait Prize, The Paddington Art Prize Highly Commended Prize and twice been the Critics’ Choice of Guardian Art Critic and ABC Arts Presenter Andrew Frost. In 2015 she was a feature artist in Artist Profile magazine and in 2018 she was awarded the coveted Bundanon Trust Artist-in-residence as well as awarded residencies with Hurstville Regional Art Gallery and Museum and DRAWinternational Residency in Caylus France.
In mid 2023 Chircop’s work was curated in a landmark first exhibition in Australia called ‘In the Arms of Unconsciousness- Women, Feminism and the Surreal’ at Hazelhurst Arts Centre. The exhibition, a cross generational survey exhibition featuring the work of 22 leading and significant Australian contemporary female artists was reviewed in ‘The Spectrum’ of The Sydney Morning Herald by leading Australian art critic John McDonald where her work was favourably featured.
Chircop has twice been invited as a podcast guest on Maria Stoljar’s highly esteemed and very popular ‘Talking with Painters’ Australian podcast series and was recently featured in an international cultural documentary called ‘Malta and Beyond’ filmed at MUZA (National Museum of Art Malta) in 2022 for TVM Malta.
She has recently been awarded an international exhibition and residency at MUŻA Malta’s National Museum of Art for 2025 and is represented internationally by Galerie Heimat in Saint-Remy-de-Provence France with works in both public and private collections globally.
