Jurors

The Juror panel of five jurors are chosen with care each year to provide Artists the opportunity for their works to be considered primarily against the criteria of the prize: Contemporary, technical excellence, forethought, and relevance, of the Artist’s Statement. Furthermore, the selection of the Juror Panel aims to offer Artist the prospect for the aesthetics, and curatorial appeal of the work to be recognised.

Introducing the 2025 Juror Panel

  • Director and Founder of Caterina Tognon Arte Contemporanea, now Caterina Tognon Gallery, B.Arch. University IUAV, PhD Fine Arts, Wien Academy, Gaffer Production designer and Artistic Director at furnace Orlando Zennaro,

    From early childhood, Caterina has developed a passion for Venetian blown glass probably because of the Venetian origins of her family.  Caterina is deeply interested in investigating  the disciplines that interface visual arts, applied and decorative arts, artistic handmade crafts, and industrial design. 

    In the ‘90s she practiced architecture and design.  In 1991 Caterina opened D’arte & Divetro, Bergamo, Northern Italy.   Her major focus was to exhibit sculptures and installations made by artists who occasionally (or continuously) used glass as one of their main media. Soon the gallery became her major activity.

    In 2004 Caterina Tognon and her team moved to Venice and relocated to the noble floor of the XVII century Palazzo da Ponte, with the name Caterina Tognon arte contemporanea, now Catrina Tognon Gallery, Palazzo Treves; focused on contemporary visual glass art.

    Caterina honoured the Prize with visiting  Western Australia as the international guest judge of the TMP24, in March 2025.

  • Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art, Supervisor of the Contemporary Art Honors and master’s programs, University of Adelaide, and an Artist working with blown and kiln formed glass. 

    Gabriella has been shortlisted in the Tom Malone Prize numerous times and won in both 2015 and 2024.  She has presented at numerous conferences, is broadly exhibited, and is multi awarded academically and artistically.  Her works are held in the Museum of Glass, Tacoma USA, Wagga Wagga National Art Glass Collection, at Queensland Art Gallery, in AGSA, and in Parliament House Canberra A.C.T.

    Gabriella has built a career as one of Australia’s most prominent glass artists. She creates her work by manipulating glass in its molten state to blow sculptural vessels, and by hot sculpting glass she’s developed a sculptural practice that explores organic and visceral objects. Drawing inspiration from the shapes and structures found within the human body, she considers the connection between the human body and the act of blowing glass.

  • Tom Rowney is renowned as one of the most accomplished glass blowers in Australia with over thirty years’ experience.  He has perfected his skills and is inspired by traditional Venetian techniques.

    The combination of precision and accuracy used to create a magnificent piece of glass is something he continuously strives for.  Rowney is passionate and inspired by the physical nature of blowing glass.  His practice is based on learning, refining, and adapting Venetian glass blowing processes in combination with his joy of making beautifully crafted objects.  This is evident when watching him work from his studio based at the Canberra Glassworks.

    Rowney, current Technical Director at Canberra Glassworks is one of Australia’s foremost glass blowers.  He is sought after for teaching and fabrication projects. His works have been collected by the National Gallery of Australia, National Glass Collection, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Powerhouse Museum, Australian Catholic University Collection, and the Tacoma Museum of Glass (USA). 

  • Marc Leib was born in South Africa, where he qualified as a pharmacist. He developed an interest in glass which soon became a passion and superseded his original profession.  He emigrated to Australia in 2002, where he settled in Perth and opened Art Glass Studio in Morley.  He enjoys teaching people how to work with glass. His studio has attracted many international glass artists to teach master classes over the years, including Narcissus Quagliata, Rudy Gritsch and Miriam Di Fiore.

    He is an award-winning glass artist, shortlisted for the TMP numerous times, winning the prestigious Tom Malone Prize in 2017, and the CBS Dichroic Award in the USA in 2007.

    Marc continues to design, and design and create public and private commissions. He has collaborated with numerous glass artists on public art. Marc’s art is held by AGWA, and in private collections internationally.

  • Neil Cownie is a designer and architect, a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects.

    Neil’s interest and appreciation of art, comes from his father Stewart Cownie; an artist and illustrator, and head artist of the West Australian newspaper for over 40 years.  Neil’s upbringing, immersed in his father’s world of art has led him to seek the inclusion  Australian artists and creatives in Architectural Designs.

    Neil Cownie combines his passion for design in all its forms; architecture, landscape, furniture, lighting, objects, product design, and art curation, with his clients’ aspirations to realise their dreams in a built form, always aiming to for creations that endure the rigours of time.

    Neil’s design studio, Neil Cownie Architect, is a research-led practice with a Western Australian sensibility; exploring the unique parameters of each project to find an outcome customised to site and client, immersing the process in local culture, and the culture specific to his clients.

    Neil designs to consider not just the isolated building, he designs with consideration of  environment and landscape, to deliver a holistic experience. 

Judges

The Judges are a panel of three including representation of the Art Gallery of Western Australia as the acquiring Australian Gallery, an internationally renowned Glass Artist with the technical skills and expertise to select a contemporary work of excellence, and a third judge who understands the foundations of the Prize, and has an artistic-based knowledge, that can offer an antithesis between acquisition and contemporary excellence.

Introducing the Judges, TMP25

  • Dante Marioni burst onto the international glass scene at the age of 19 with a signature style that has been described as the purest of classical forms executed in glass by an American glassblower. His amphoras, vases, and ewers are derived from Greek and Etruscan prototypes, yet they are imaginatively and sometimes whimsically reinterpreted. dantemarioni.com

    Marioni trained in centuries-old Venetian glassblowing techniques with some of the greatest masters in contemporary glass.  In his teens Marioni observed Benjamin Moore (~1970), a foundational figure in the Seattle studio glass movement, make a perfectly symmetrical, on-center glass form inspired by Venetian glass. Moore introduced him to Lino Tagliapietra, (1983), legendary Murano maestro, and Pilchuck Glass School Seattle master, (1979 to present).  Marioni continues to work with Taglipietra today. He also studied with other well-known studio glass pioneers, such as Fritz Dreisbach and Richard Marquis, who is widely recognised for his unique interpretations of Venetian decorative techniques.

    The son of American studio glass pioneer Paul Marioni, Dante Marioni was raised in a family of artists that includes two well-known uncles, painter Joseph Marioni and conceptual artist Tom Marioni.  For Marioni, making objects is about the art of glassblowing rather than the creation of glass art, the process rather than the result.  Marioni’s elegant works are the brilliant record of his on-going relationship with and exploration of this material.

  • Dr. Stefano Carboni is a native of Venice, a specialist in Islamic art and museum strategies, leadership and management.  A part-time Lecturer of Art History and Curatorial Studies at the University of Western Australia, (2011 to present), immediate past Director and CEO, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, (2008 - 2019), and Knighted by the President of the Republic of Italy: Cavaliere all ’Ordine del Merito della Repubblica Italiana (2023).

     

    His research, lectures and publications span several areas of Islamic art, with a particular emphasis on glass studies and the art-historical relationship between the Islamic world, Europe, and Asia.  His interest in glass began as a student at the University of Venice, with his first public lecture about the historical and artistic relationship between Venetian and Islamic glass. 

     

    Contributions to the field include the exhibition Glass of the Sultans, Corning Museum of Glass, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Benaki Museum in 2001-2002 (in collaboration with David Whitehouse);  the catalogue of the Islamic glass collection, National Museum of Kuwait (Glass from Islamic Lands, 2001);  Mamluk Enamelled and Gilded Glass the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar (2003), amongst other specialised publications since 1989. He lectures widely in these areas and  is currently working on a comprehensive catalogue raisonné of the 14th-century Mamluk enamelled and gilded mosque lamps, to be published in 2029.

     

    While at AGWA Carboni was inspirational in supporting the Tom Malone Glass Art Prize, and with his background stepped in Venice, Islamic Art and Glass, and 11 years’ experience of the Prize, Carboni’s experience and passion for Glass Art is highly respected.

  • Robert Cook is a Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Prior to this, he worked as a newspaper art and theatre critic, a built heritage historian and a curator at the University of Western Australia. In 1999 he graduated with a PhD from the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, Curtin University, titled “Cuts, Ties, Flows: Gender and the Consolidation of Colonialism in WA Art 1915-1945”, that used a psychoanalytic framework to address the deployment of structures of white masculinities and femininities in aesthetic strategies that attempted to naturalise occupation.

    Robert was the curator and manager of the Tom Malone Prize for its 20-year duration at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. During this time, he authored the two major publications: Contemporary Australian Glass: The Tom Malone Prize 2003-2017 and Contemporary Australian Glass: The Tom Malone Prize 2018-2022. Additionally, he has acquired for AGWA various glass works outside the Prize, by those such as Cobi Cockburn and Jessica Loughlin as well as major pieces by artists working with glass including Alister Rowe, Consuelo Cavaniglia and Josiah McEleheny.      

    With his years of experience, Robert continues to work closely with the Tom Malone Glass Art Prize, with and on behalf of AGWA, the acquiring Gallery of the winning works.