The Trust's support for Australian artists is directed through various programs developed in response to the specific needs of artists in different career stages or art forms.
Funding has and continues to take the form of grants, fellowships, and commissions.
A record of the Trust's awards, spanning from our first grants in June 1993 to the present, is archived in our Grants Database.
The Trust's first grants were approved in June 1993 and marked the beginning of our main funding program, Emerging Artist Grants.
The Emerging Artist Grants program offers grants of up to $15,000 to support emerging and early-career artists, practising in all art forms and disciplines, to take up structured professional development and networking opportunities, usually overseas.
Today, over 1900 artists spanning almost every art form have been supported through the program.
'Please Leave (a message)', co-created by grantee Dana McMillan as part of the collective ClusterFlux. Featuring performers (L-R) Linda van Egmond, Chris Whyte, Miray Sidhom and Jack Hilton.
In 2024, the Trust joined the Sidney Myer Fund's longstanding Creative Fellowships program, funding two additional Fellows per year.
The Ian Potter Creative Fellowships provide unrestricted, tax-free grants of $200,000 over two years to two exceptional individual Australian artists. Specific outcomes for the Fellowships are not required, so Fellows are welcome to spend their grants as they see fit.
In 2023, the Trust partnered with the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) to establish the Ian Potter Emerging Performers Fellowship Program.
The program will see two Fellowships awarded annually to support outstanding ANAM alumni who demonstrate a commitment to developing an independent creative practice. Fellows receive $100,000 in funding from the Trust alongside tailored mentoring from ANAM’s faculty of professional musicians over the two-year course of their Fellowship.
In the 1980s, The Ian Potter Foundation supported a series of Sculpture Acquisitions to assist Australian sculptors and acquire works of excellence for the NGV.
In 1999, the Trust revived this idea through a program of significant Arts Commissions.
Through the Arts Commissions program, the Trust has funded two commission series, one for music composition and one for moving image works. Each commission series offered major awards to individual artists for the creation of specific works in a particular art form.
Darling Darling by Gabriella Hirst, IPMIC 2020 Premiere at ACMI. Image: Phoebe Powell.
The Ian Potter Music Commission (1999–2009) was established to help spotlight the composition of new Australian music, an area that lacked profile and investment yet deserves to hold a central role in our cultural and artistic landscape.
The commissions aimed to reward creative excellence, vision and ideas with the opportunity to develop, create and perform new works.
The Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (IPMIC) (2012–2022) represented Australia's most significant long-term commissioning program of new contemporary moving image art by Australian artists.
A joint initiative of the Trust and ACMI, IPMIC supported mid-career artists in producing ambitious new works and aimed to cultivate a greater understanding and appreciation of contemporary moving image art in Australian audiences.
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