Rigg Design 2025 Masthead - boxCrop

Rigg Design Prize 2025

Next in Design

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square

Level 3

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19 Sep 25 – 1 Feb 26, free entry

Open daily 10am–5pm

The Rigg Design Prize is Australia’s most prestigious accolade for contemporary design. Since its inception in 1994, this triennial prize exhibition has featured over one hundred designers across a range of disciplines, celebrating their creative achievements and providing a valuable platform for visibility, recognition and impact. For its landmark tenth edition in 2025, the $40,000 prize will be awarded to an early-career Australian design practice, drawing attention to the new generation of talent. Bringing together emerging designers, the exhibition spans ceramics, glass, furniture, woodwork, metalwork, textiles, lighting and contemporary jewellery, presenting ambitious works that reflect bold approaches to materiality, form and function.

Early-career practitioners play a crucial role in shaping Australia’s design ecosystem and culture. They bring bold ideas and fresh perspectives that challenge conventions and expand the possibilities of design and making. The Rigg Design Prize 2025 – Next in Design – recognises the energy, ingenuity and vision of emerging designers who are making important contributions to their fields.

Previous Rigg Design Prize winners, Simone LeAmon (2009), Marian Hosking (2012), Adam Goodrum (2015), and Paul Hecker and Hamish Guthrie of Hecker Guthrie (2018), judged the Rigg Design Prize 2025 – Next in Design – and unanimously awarded the accolade to Aranda-born, designer and maker, Alfred Lowe, for his work You and me, us never part, 2025. Alfred receives the $40,000 cash prize.

Finalists

Selected from across Australia, the 2025 finalists include:

The Rigg Design Prize:
A legacy of Australian design

The Rigg Design Prize is Australia’s highest accolade for contemporary design. Established in 1994 through the visionary bequest of Colin G. Rigg (1895–1982), the $40,000 prize champions design as an influential cultural practice and is awarded triennially to an Australian designer demonstrating outstanding creative achievement.

On the occasion of its tenth edition, the Rigg Design Prize honours Rigg’s legacy of generosity, which laid the foundation for this significant national award. Since its inception, the prize has provided a vital platform for visibility, recognition and public engagement with contemporary Australian design at the NGV.

Over the past three decades, the NGV has invited more than 130 designers and studios to participate in the prize exhibitions. Each edition of the prize reflects the evolving landscape of Australian design, offering insight into the ideas, issues and contexts shaping contemporary practice. At the same time, it provides a prestigious exhibition for designers to showcase their work, representative of diverse approaches, myriad skills and boundless creative thinking.

The recipients of the prize are Neville Assad (1994), Robert Baines (1997), Louise Weaver (2003), Sally Marsland (2006), Simone LeAmon (2009), Marian Hosking (2012), Adam Goodrum (2015), Hecker Guthrie (2018) and Leo Burnett Australia (2022) – practitioners whose work continues to influence and inspire.

The Rigg Design Prize is generously supported by the Cecily & Colin Rigg Bequest, managed by Equity Trustees.

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