Georges Mora Fellowship

The $10,000 Georges Mora Fellowship gives one contemporary artist the opportunity to study, experiment and explore fresh thinking in their art.

The recipient is awarded $10,000 for up to 12 months’ research and given the means and uninterrupted time to work closely with the rich resources of the State Library, including access to a private study desk space in a shared office for 12 months (January – December 2023).

The successful applicant will also receive help applying for a self-identified local or international residency, as well as access to organisations and individuals with specialist knowledge to support them to research, experiment and create.

The Georges Mora Fellowship is awarded with funds generously donated by arts supporters and with the support of State Library Victoria, Alliance Française de Melbourne and other partners.

Read our frequently asked questions and guidelines for more information.

About Georges Mora

The Georges Mora Fellowship is named after entrepreneur, restaurateur and art dealer Georges Mora. Georges was born in Germany in 1913. After World War II, he briefly settled in New York before immigrating to Melbourne, where he purchased and ran the landmark Balzac restaurant in East Melbourne and St Kilda’s Tolarno Hotel. The hotel included a gallery, which was moved to South Yarra in 1979.

In his lifetime, Georges Mora was an avid supporter of the arts and Australian artists, including Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, John Perceval and Albert Tucker. Georges’ commitment to developing innovative and varied artists saw him produce outstanding exhibition programs featuring local and international artists. He died in 1992.

Previous recipients

Explore our fellows gallery to learn more about the inspiring projects undertaken by past and present fellows.

• 2022: Phuong Ngo with the project Racist furniture which explored and unpacked the history of race and racism in Australia through the history of furniture making and manufacturing.
• 2019: Ruth Hoflich with the artwork Reality is only a word which drew on the relationship between digital and analogue image culture and information processing, resulting in a printed artwork for the Library's collection.
• 2018: Dr Jude Walton with an installation and performance which looked at the topics of women Surrealist artists, Surrealism and performance, the notion of the muse, self-representation and objects of desire.
• 2017: Catherine Evans with the project The view from Mount Disappointment, which sought to reinvigorate and open questions about individual connection to place amid various tensions present in the contemporary world: be it personal, environmental or political.
• 2016: James Geurts with the project Floodplain which identified several sites along the flood plain of the Birrarung River in order to draw out ecological currents and identify cultural significance.
• 2015: Inez de Vega with the performance Performing disorder! which researched the history of women incarcerated in Victoria's psychiatric institutions, culminating in a collaborative show.
• 2013: Brook Andrew and Trent Walter who created four large artists' books combining hand-printed and mechanical-reproduction printing techniques as part of their project Dual/duel.
• 2012: Linda Tegg who used photography and video to create Forecast, a work exploring the interplay between the real and the performed, through personal experience of travel and learning a language.
• 2010: Ross Coulter who released 10,000 hand-folded paper planes from the balconies of the Library's La Trobe Reading Room to create a visual representation of thought patterns that have occurred in the room.
• 2009: Phillip Brophy with the multimedia project Colour me dead which explored the unromantic history of how artists and their art have been depicted in cinema and popular culture as mad, aberrant and psychopathic.
• 2008: Cyrus Tang with the digital video and large-format print project Memories of childhood.
• 2007: Trinh Vu who researched how 3D digital technologies are being adopted in the fine arts through their project Blue skies.