SYDNEY—This year's Blake Prize goes to David Tucker, who was awarded the prize and $20,000 (U.S. $18,000) today at the National Art School Gallery in Sydney. His work, A Local Girl Comes Home, is a rendition of an ancient Hindu goddess. It is the first sculpture to win Australia's top prize for religious art in the award's 57 years, according to the Australian Associated Press. 

Tucker was inspired by a goddess exhibition that he attended as well as the news that two of his sculpting models became pregnant with their first children.

"I'd like the work to be a personal story about my friends who were expecting their first child and also a story that was universal and archetypal and even cosmic," Tucker said.