The JamFactory has announced that Canberra-based glass artist Annette Blair is the winner of the 2026 FUSE Glass Prize.
This biennial non-acquisitive prize for Australian and New Zealand glass artists is Australasia’s richest prize for glass. It provides a platform for artists to push themselves and their work to new limits and focuses public attention on the importance of glass as a medium for contemporary artistic expression.
The non-acquisitive $20,000 cash prize was awarded to Annette Blair for her piece, Remnants of time – In idleness, 2026. Blair is a glassmaker based in the Canberra region. She works out of Canberra Glassworks as well as her independent studio in Burra, New South Wales.
She has dedicated her practice to refining technical processes to create works that celebrate the beauty and movement of glass as a material, while exploring the connections we have to people, objects, and place. With a broad skill set, Blair regularly works as a gaffer, fabricating glass works for other artists, and travels nationally and internationally to teach glassblowing and glass painting.
Blair completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the Australian National University School of Art in 2004, before relocating to Adelaide to undertake the JamFactory Associate Program in the Glass Studio. She returned to Canberra in 2008, where she continues to grow her diverse practice.
Blair’s work has been recognised through numerous awards and exhibitions. She has been a finalist in the Ranamok Glass Prize, the Tom Malone Prize, the Still: National Still Life Prize, and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. In 2022, she was awarded the Vicki Torr International Year of Glass Prize. Her work is held in both private and public collections, and she most recently completed a permanent commissioned work for Canberra Glassworks at the Australian War Memorial.
“Netty Blair’s work is exceptional in both its ambition and execution. The scale and technical sophistication of the work are matched by its conceptual depth, drawing viewers into reflections on nostalgia, impermanence, and transformation,” said the judges.
“Through an innovative and deeply personal engagement with glass, Blair creates works that are visually striking and emotionally affecting, demonstrating the unique capacity of the medium to hold both beauty and decay in tension.”
The David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize, providing $5,000 cash and a professional development residency at JamFactory valued at a further $5,000, was awarded to Adelaide-based artist Isobel Waters for her entry In the Absence of a Diagnosis, 2025.
Waters’ practice is informed by her experience as a health care worker, where she engages with the physical and emotional complexities of the human body. This clinical background continues to shape Waters’ approach to material and form, driving a practice that interrogates personal and socio-political dimensions of health, care, and embodiment.
Working across glass blowing, kiln forming, flameworking, cold working, and assemblage, Waters’ aims to create emotive pieces that explore the fragility, strength, and adaptability of the body. Varying from intimate compositions to large scale installations, Waters’ work often invites interactive or immersive viewing experiences, encouraging audiences to reflect on their own physicality, gender, the broader systems that govern healthcare, and the human condition.
Through layered processes and tactile surfaces, Waters aims to evoke the rawness of bodily experience—scars, tension, healing, and resilience. Her work exists in a space between art and anatomy, where glass becomes a medium for empathy, critique, and transformation.
“In its willingness to embrace complexity, uncertainty and experimentation, Isobel Waters work In the Absence of a Diagnosis, 2025 is both technically ambitious and deeply considered, using the unique properties of glass to hold tension, fragility, and transformation in ways that no other material can,” said the judges.
“Moving fluidly between conceptual inquiry and material exploration, she challenges conventional ideas of craft, allowing process, risk, and discovery to shape the outcome.”
The works of twelve established and six emerging artists were selected as finalists by the 2026 judging panel. The 2026 judges are Tami Landis, Curator of Post-War and Contemporary Glass, Corning Museum of Glass, Aimee Frodsham, Chief Executive Officer + Artistic Director, Canberra Glassworks; Dr Lee-Anne Hall, Curatorial Director, JamFactory; Tom Moore, Glass Artist and 2024 FUSE Glass Prize Winner and Brian Parkes, Chief Executive Officer at JamFactory.
Established in 2016, the biennial FUSE Glass Prize is supported in 2026 by founding donors for the prize, Jim and Helen Carreker along with David McKee AO and Pam McKee, Diana Laidlaw AM, Nicholas Linke, Maia Ambegaokar and Joshua Bishop and Susan Armitage. The David & Dulcie Henshall Foundation have also generously supported the Emerging Artist Category of FUSE through The David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize.
The exhibition of finalist’s works will finish at JamFactory (Adelaide) on 5 July, followed by a tour to the ANU School of Art & Design Gallery (Canberra) from 18 August – 4 September 2026.
Images: Annette Blair, Remnants of time in idleness, 2026 – photo by Adam McGrath | Isobel Waters, In the Absence of a Diagnosis, 2025 – photo by Connor Patterson