Sydney photographer Jacky Redgate has won Australia's most prestigious photography prize the $25,000 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize.

Redgate's winning photograph Light throw (mirrors) #4 2011 from the series Light throw (mirrors) is a beautiful, ambiguous picture. Redgate has described the photograph, a large still life arrangement created by throwing light from silver, bronze and grey mirrors onto brightly coloured modular plastic food containers from the 1960s and ' 70s, as "a cosmos or cosmology of objects".

Jacky Redgate is a photographic artists. For over 25 years, her work has been included in national and international exhibitions, and her work is held in many major public and private collections in Australia and overseas.

This year thirty-seven works were selected for the exhibition from approximately 2,000 photographs submitted by 432 entrants.

Shortlisted entries are part of the Bowness Photography Prize exhibition on at the MGA until 16 October 2011.