Melissa Smith, landscape printmaker, wins Women's Art Prize Tasmania

Smith was presented the award in a Friday night ceremony at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery for her piece The light of hidden flowers, an intaglio print judges said belied a "complexity of technique".

"The veils of mark making in Smith's work are evocative with distinctive layering of compositional elements and atmospheric perspective," the judging panel said in a statement.

"Smith's mapping of place and practice is innate and masterful."

The winners were chosen from a field of 25 finalists.

Smith's winning piece, hidden flowers, is a dark blue sheet stencilled with almost-topographical lines of white and delicate, swaying strands of wheat and flowers.

Her work is represented in private and public collections across Australia and overseas including the National Gallery of Australia and Regional Galleries in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

And Smith was not the only large prize-pool winner at this year's awards: the inaugural $10,000 lutrawita Prize was won by Cassie Sullivan, a cross-discipline lutruwita/trouwerner First Nations artist.

Sullivan earned the debut accolade for her piece to collect with holes in your basket (i), 2023, a copper work reflecting her artistic vision to "constantly question what can be imbued through materiality to give voice to complex identities."

"Sullivan's metallic weaving has a gossamer quality and appears to float on air," the judging panel wrote of the winning artwork.

"Her story interweaves with those of the old ones' and the thread embodies those practices and memories. It is full of movement and enlivened by its interplay of shadow and shine.

"Its fragility and strength provides a sense of refinement, both conceptual and technical."

Still to be announced of the Prize's four categories are the $5,000 Emerging Artist Prize, the winner of which will be unveiled at the exhibition's opening in Devonport, and the $2,000 People's Choice Award.

Community members are invited to cast their vote for the artist whose work they like most from this year's finalist exhibition.

The winner is set to be announced at the end of the exhibition's statewide tour.

An exhibition of the 25 finalists works, including Sullivan's and Smith's, is on display until July 7 at the Queen Victoria Museum at Inveresk before touring to the Devonport Regional Gallery and finally Moonah Arts Centre.