The award winner, to be announced at the Ballarat Arts Foundation's 2014 Eureka Art Award exhibition opening at the Post Office Gallery on Thursday, will receive $1000.

The exhibition, which opens on November 6, showcases a broad selection of work by Ballarat Art Foundation's alumni contemporary visual artists and will be opened by Federation University Australia's deputy vice-chancellor, Professor Andy Smith.

A second artist will receive the $500 People's Choice Award at the end of the exhibition in December.

Established in 2000 through an initiative of the Ballarat South Rotary Club, the Ballarat Arts Foundation aims to assist and encourage the aspirations of local and emerging artists who have lived, worked or studied in the Ballarat region by providing grants such as the Eureka Art Award.

Last year, Aldona Kmiec took home the Ballarat Arts Foundation Eureka Art Award.

She received the award for her photograph of Molebatsi in a traditional South African Xhosa outfit, from her series My Australia My

Journey.