The Olive Cotton Award is a biennial award for excellence in photographic portraiture offering a $20,000 major prize, funded by Cotton’s family in memory of “one of Australia's leading twentieth century photographers”, Olive Cotton.
Additional Directors Choice awards to the value of $2,000. All awards are acquisitive with the winning works becoming part of the Tweed River Art Gallery’s “Australian Portrait Collection”. The exhibition is selected from entrants across Australia and is an opportunity for both emerging and established photographers.

Director: Susi Muddiman, contact person: Anouk Beck, Public Programs Curator

About Olive Cotton (1911-2003).
She discovered the art of photography in childhood and stayed committed to it all her life. Her mother was a talented painter who died young; her father, a geologist, had learnt the elements of photography for his journey to the Antarctic in 1907 and later taught it to his children.

Having graduated with an Arts degree, Olive Cotton worked successfully as a photographer at the Dupain studios in Sydney until the end of World War 2, then moved with her new husband Ross McInerney, to the bush near Koorawatha, NSW. For 20 years she had no access to darkroom facilities, but kept taking photographs.

In 1964 Cotton opened a small studio in Cowra and took local portraits, weddings and commissions. After a 40 year absence from the city art scene she re-emerged in 1985 with her first solo show at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, she then concentrated on rediscovering and printing her life's work.