Julia Flanagan works across painting, sculpture, textiles and drawing. Born in Lake Macquarie, Julia moved to Sydney to study Painting and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2004 and her Painting Honours in 2005. Julia has recently been announce the winner of the 2025 Hawkesbury Art Prize and highly commended in the George’s River sculpture prize. In 2024, Julia collaborated with media artist Miguel Felipe Valenzuela on a large scale interactive 360 degree video installation titled Endless Sunbeams in Another Time at MAP MIMA on Awabakal country for Museum of Art and Culture , MAC Yapang. Julia was commission to make a series of large scale sculptures for exhibition in the gardens of The Hazelhurst Gallery in Gymea, NSW, titled Many Things to Many in 2022. In 2020 she collaborated with Iconic fashion label GORMAN on an extensive collection of clothing adorned with her artwork. She has exhibited extensively in galleries in Sydney, Wollongong, Melbourne and Newcastle, and has works in local and international private and institutional collections. She has been a finalist in many art prizes including Muswellbrook, Waverley , Gosford and in 2019 won the sculpture prize for the Georges River Art Prize.
Established in 2021, the National Emerging Art Prize was created to provide an annual, highly visible national platform to identify, promote and support the most promising emerging visual artists in Australia.