Mary Oliphant Prize. Seventh Gallery Award. BESTOWED: EXPLORING TRAUMA AS A FORM OF INHERITANCE THROUGH CERAMIC SCULPTURES AND RITUALISED PERFORMANCE Reimagining heirlooms from the artist’s Javanese heritage to create ceramic sculptural work, Bestowed challenges the persistence of filial piety in
Recipient of the The ADFAS (Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Society), Yarra Branch Award _________________________________ ISOLATED FACES metaphorically explores anxieties of isolation and belonging. This project is a self-reflexive study that utilises non-traditional portraiture by shadowing the faces of loved ones to
SASHA’S A to Я COLLECTION: A REFLECTION ON NATIONAL IDENTITY THROUGH PRINTED IMAGES OF ICONIC SYMBOLS AND EMBLEMS. My work explores the interplay between consumerist culture and identity, examining how everyday objects detached from their practical use become moguls
BEAUTY IN BODILY REALITIES: RECONTEXTUALISING THE FEMININE EXPERIENCE THROUGH EXPANDED CERAMIC PRACTICE is a studio based research project that employs an expanded ceramic practice and unconventional installation strategies to investigate an recontextualise the feminine experience. Aspects of the grotesque,
BODY VERTICAL My video installation uses advanced editing, special effects and compositing techniques to interrogate patriarchally-skewed cinematic codes embedded in mainstream film. Crucially, it responds to feminist screen theory in seeking new ways to represent the material female body. By
THE SENSATION OF CONNECTIVE CHROMATIC ENERGY: Lyrical abstraction and the metaphysical in painting. My Master’s project investigates lyrical abstraction through the medium of gestural, embodied and immersive painting. My inspiration is expressed through an intuitive process that explores spiritual
Melbourne Art Supplies Award Winner Sanctuary Reimagined: Unveiling Spiritual rebirth and bicultural renewal through animism, eternalism, repetition, and layering. Sanctuary Reimagined intricately maps my transformative journey of spiritual rebirth and bi-cultural renewal through mixed-media installation. By employing a methodology of repetition,
Sacred Unfolding Sacred Unfolding employs intuitive ink painting, patterns, and fabric installation to explore spirituality, Buddhist philosophy, and phenomenology, drawing on my lived experience to reflect on our shared human condition. At its core, my work seeks to reveal inner
Bo Pang is a multidisciplinary artist who is currently using weaving, casting, engraving and other forms of handmade contemporary jewellery and installations to communicate with herself. In the process, she analyses and reflects on herself and brings the materials closer to her
Lowenstein Arts Management Prize. THE JUNK PILE draws upon Bonnie-Jean Whitlock’s relationship with material, image and process. “I call the accumulation of experience sustained within my own body my ‘junk pile’, it contaminates everything I say, do and make. I
THE SOUND OF A PAINTING OF A SONG: EXPLORING HOW SOUND AND IMAGE MAY GENERATE AND ENHANCE EACH OTHER. Over the time of my Master’s study I have made a series of explorations to open creative connections between my concurrent
Scope Creep Scope Creep seeks to address the absurdity of digital capitalism and its effects on ecology and psychology through a multidisciplinary piece comprising performance, video and installation. In managerial rhetoric, the term ‘scope creep’ refers to the sweeping and
Recipient of the Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence and contribution to the program, Master of Fine Art. _________________________________ TOWARDS REPOSE An exploration of materiality and ephemerality through the use of organic matter and geometric patterns. This multidisciplinary research project frames
Lowensteins Arts Management Award Winner 2024 Dean’s Award for academic excellence Recipient for DEBUT XXI at Blindside ARI (April 2025) https://blindside.org.au/ Between the Lines (2022-24) explores diasporic identity linked to the psychological impacts of colonialism through sculptural installation. My artworks are
IMMORTAL CLICKSTREAM IMMORTAL CLICKSTREAM uses my browser history as source material for a series of mixed media works exploring meaning and identity in a world overburdened with data and indiscriminate visual noise. Images related to my internet search history are archived
LOSING IT: An exploration involving feelings of loss through Installations with ephemeral sculptures. Losing It consists of three works – Drop, Knocked, and a video work (with sound) titled Pearls in Rain. Each work captures hesitation and anticipation with the use
THE WAY FORWARD IS BACK The world, the universe, began in energy, in light. The first thing recorded, whether it is the Big Bang or Genesis, is light. Light is the finger marks of the creation of the universe. When we
Grotesque embodiments in a phenomenological probe of human desire through anatomical dismemberments and the antagonism of corporeal boundaries: A CARNAL DISSECTION
ARTIFACT 7 explores the lines between documentation and artwork through the installation of unorthodox print, video, and painting. I paint on hard surfaces over long durations, and then pour PVA adhesive over it and peel it back as a pseudo monoprint.
Deans Award Winner ADFAS (Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Society), Yarra Branch – Young and Emerging Artists Fund Award Winner Diya Mathur’s practice explores the transgenerational impacts of the 1947 Partition of India on both collective and personal identities, investigating
COUTURE OF DESIRE, which takes the form of a discomforting installation, challenges the conventional notions of beauty and eroticism and explores depictions of the so-called ‘perverse’ in human fantasy. It is within this delicate tension that my sculptural garments find the
Lowenstein Arts Management Prize. MACHINIC ECOLOGIES is a practice-led project exploring the interfaces between humans, technology and the environment through transmedia installation. The installation space stages a re-imagined landscape composed of screen-based works, 3D prints, robotic assemblages and generative sound. These
Rendered Other and Cast Out: Staging a multi-disciplinary cautionary tale about global warming and Antarctica (2025) My project warns of our uncertain future due to human-caused global warming. Staged as a multi-disciplinary cautionary tale, it consists of a three act
Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence and contribution to the program, Master of Fine Art. WILD THINGS combines my love of portrait photography with sculpture to counter divisive narratives that arise primarily though bodily differences. Through playful materials, colour and absurdity,
NAVA Ignition Prize. DIGITAL WONDERSCAPES Exploring the wonder and new ways of seeing natural phenomena through atmospheric colourful light projections I use the ephemeral nature of light to explore and interrogate new ways of seeing, by employing digital techniques and
ADFAS (Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Society), Yarra Branch – Young and Emerging Artists Fund Award Winner Fiona Morgan is a multi-disciplinary artists based in Wudawurrung country, in regional Victoria. Morgan’s practice is focused on painting and installation, primarily concentrating
FROM MY MOTHER examines the passing on of knowledge through the maternal line, together with celebrating the female body and their unpaid, unseen, and undervalued labour in the context of Indian culture. Through the framework of contemporary feminism, it seeks to
NOT NOTHING/IT’S SOMETHING explores an embodied approach to materiality to investigate the loss of self and gender politics in relation to creative freedom through a series of metaphorical artworks. Materiality and humour are used to interrogate gender oppression while seeking
Recipient of the Lowenstein Arts Management Prize and the NAVA Ignition Prize. _________________________________ THE SECOND LANGUAGE Navigating Marginalised Ecologies Using a Multi-Disciplinary Practice. This multi-disciplinary project combines ceramic objects, paper, video, and the recorded voice to examine issues of ecological degradation
WE WILL BE YOUR HERO BABY An exploration of the painterly as a visual language for creating playfully critical narratives across a variety of historically loaded material surfaces. My studio based practice intuitively draws from a personalised painterly vocabulary
Why I Knit My practice explores neurodivergent experience through wearable textiles, participatory performance, and large-scale crochet installation. Rooted in hand-knitting, embroidery, and tactile making, my work transforms personal strategies of survival and regulation into shared encounters, positioning textile labour as
RMIT Culture Residency Award Winner Sticky stuff: exploring human-object relationships through found materials. This install-based project uses accumulating, arranging and documenting an excess of found everyday materials to consider human-object relationships. Through humorous and absurd gestures, I reconsider objects and
CNIDAGARIDEX [Mushroom Jellyfish]. This project brings into being an encyclopedic database of imagined ecology that introduces new, unusual lifeforms known as mushroom jellyfish. Inspired in part by the Pokémon game series’ creature directory, the Pokédex, and the blending together of
Nearly-Mary Oliphant Award Winner Jason is an established multi-disciplinary, award-winning artist with a 40-year arts practice. He is a stage designer who also creates immersive installation art. He is experienced in: Visual arts: Installation construction design and construction. Theatre &
واﻧﮕﮭﻨﺎ (Light Sleep)
NAVA Ignition Prize. 75% MORE FLAVOURFUL: Exploring Thing-power and Trauma through multidisciplinary practice. This Master’s project uses installation, text-based works and image prints to negotiate trauma, self-hatred and shame through accessing the aesthetic possibility of material agency. Through the techniques of collage and
PLANTS & PLAY DATES Through this series of temporary installations, I utilise intuitive, experiential art making to explore themes of agency and communion. By engaging with living plants and multimedia, I inhabit new and unfamiliar spaces in an open and
Looking for Mollie uses photography to examine the legacy of taxidermied zoo animals, focusing on Mollie, a Bornean orangutan from Melbourne Zoo (1901–1923). As part of my MFA capstone, Looking for Mollie critiques the relationship between taxidermy, objectification, and cultural
SAFE ZONE SAFE ZONE—an exploration of psychological healing through a performative multimedia installation—explores my everyday emotional struggles, dreams, and memories during the years spent in Covid lockdown. By using a methodology of documenting and sharing, I aim to create an
Nearly Mary Oliphant Prize. M(O)THERED MEAT Inez’s work interrogates the monstrous feminine within Malaysian folklore to challenge the oppressive patriarchal systems held together by tradition and culture. This rebellion against the systemic misogyny that plagues the Malayan society manifests as
Reclamation of the Body is a project that seeks to give voice to the language and experience of the body through painting, asemic writing and drawing. Experimenting with sculpting, mark-making and working on large-scale surfaces whose form is continuously changing
hope fall / Exploring the destabilisation of the present moment through material poetics and installation practice. In this object-based installation, I aim to present a site of precarity and instability, drawing on conceptual ideas from New Materialism, Phenomenology and Minimalism.
NO ONE TOLD ME I WAS LIVING IN A BRUTALIST NIGHTMARE MARK II. “Cumbernauld, a land of concrete mounds interspersed with grassy knowles and nooks and crannies made for kick the can; a double nougat ice cream on a Friday
Recipient for DEBUT XXI at Blindside ARI (April 2025) https://blindside.org.au/ Fragments of Identity: Exploring Identity, Migration, and Memory through Ceramics and Printmaking. My Master’s project explores the intricate relationship between personal identity, migration, and memory through the mediums of printmaking,
Unfolding Impermanence: Collage, Myth, and the Metaphysical Dimensions of Contemporary Painting This project, featuring the 6m kinetic painting Public Dreams/Private Myths, begins with drawing and monochromatic analogue collage, where photographs and sketches are fragmented and reassembled into new forms as
Wondering the third space: navigating the politics of personal and collective identity through deconstructive installations and sculptures. The installation project uses multimedia sculptures to explore Qin’s complicated relationship with her life under China’s collectivism. By deconstructing and reconstructing everyday materials
Recipient of the Mary Oliphant Best MFA Tutorial Presentation Prize. _________________________________ THE RESONANCE OF A TANGLE engages with bodily agency and constraint through an interdisciplinary practice of painting. By employing material experimentation and improvisation, this project seeks to record an
Maryam Attar is an Iranian-born visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia, specialising in immersive installation art. Her practice focuses on painting and installation, with a primary emphasis on creating immersive spaces that explore themes of feminism and activism. Maryam earned
The flow of desires and obligations. My Master’s project explores the multitude of layers concerning diaspora identity and socio-cultural hybridity through multimedia projection painting. Drawing influence from the shojo genre, I experiment with the blending of Chinese painting aesthetics with
TO THE SOUTH OF HOME is a video essay that depicts an imagined conversation between my father and I, as his sudden death left us no chance for a final conversation. Through this work, I attempt to confront my childhood
Recipient of the NAVA Ignition Prize and the Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence and contribution to the program, Master of Fine Art. _________________________________ HOW WILL I REMEMBER explores my Chinese-Australian bi-cultural identity by examining the concept of loss and grief.
The ADFAS (Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Society), Yarra Branch award. FROM THIS ANCIENT LAND TO THE RIVER DELTA is an experimental interdisciplinary project that combines five mixed-medium banner paintings ranging in size between 70cm x 170cm to 200cm x 210cm and five
Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence and contribution to the program, Master of Fine Art. RESTITCH THE FAMILY TIE. My practice uses contemporary enamel jewellery to explore emotional states related to childhood trauma, self-protection and family reconciliation. It alludes, in particular,
Although my work reflects the day-to-day experience of having a mental health issue (MHI), it is more than this. My artworks seek to represent elements on the continuum of human subjectivity to create a commonality between myself as artist, and
PLASTICITIES, malaises, SURVIVALS PLASTICITIES, malaises, SURVIVALS is a practice led project that has emerged out of a personal experience of displacement. Working between Dight’s Falls, the foundry, and the gallery I cast beeswax sculptures, gather found materials, and record video
THE BODY MALLEABLE questions fixity and conventions of form through investigating the malleability, materiality and opportunity of the body. Through a process of self-reflexivity I navigate the sensate physicality of embodiment and create modes of extension through material, replication and
Recipient of the The ADFAS (Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Society), Yarra Branch Award. _________________________________ This project seeks to explore life through painting. This project also seeks to explore painting through life. Through this project, I create abstract paintings based on
UNVEILING DREAMSCAPES: Messages of the Subconscious & Unconscious – Examining through Pencil Gestures. This project explores symbolism and meaning of my dreams interpretation with art-making, aiming to explore the symbolism and meaning of my dreams through visual representations. By using
Room for Nowhere My master’s project explores the embodied expression of uncertainty within states of anxiety through painting-based sculpture and its constituent spatial installations. Using cardboard as a primary material, I create a space that carries functional implications yet remains
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UNFILTERED: EXPLORING MY PSYCHE THROUGH THE ACT OF PAINTING. My Master’s project embraces an explorative painting process tethered to memory and imagination. I unleash embodied raw expression to manifest large symbolic compositions of self, enabling me the agency to reconstruct
Moustachioed Women and Rhinoplastic Girls This photography project is my experimental and cultural exploration of religious dogma, gender inequality and censorship in contemporary Iran. In this practice I use social media as a source to inspire the creation of staged
Rose is a multi-disciplinary artist, presently focusing on handmade and self-designed jewellery installations. As an individual of Australia’s large South Asian diaspora, Rose explores her experience being raised within the Northern Rivers (NSW) community as an young Indian immigrant. Documenting
The ADFAS (Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Society), Yarra Branch award. HARMONIOUS COSMOS explores lyrical narratives by combining Daoist philosophy with magic realist paintings. Drawing upon Daoist philosophy, my fundamental concept is embracing the flow of life and nature. I depict
UNTITLED This multidisciplinary project incorporating textiles, printmaking, and installation, explores the effect of negative thought patterns on everyday life. Focusing on repetitive and obsessive making, I investigate how the creative process can imitate ruminations and reveal a new way of
GHOST NET – Capturing Narratives of Ghost Nets Through Soft Sculptural Installations This project manifests an underwater kelp forest. I construct densely beaded and embellished soft sculpture to create a cluster of pillar-like installations. These relate to the theme of
Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof (I only know the way to the train station) Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof (I only know the way to the train station) 2025, ink, pencil, digital print on Bible paper, 14.8×21cm (Single size, 28-piece
OVER AND OVER AGAIN Sienna Barton is a Naarm-based painter and textile artist. Her artistic practice is obsessive and time-consuming. Often serving as a means of soothing fidgety fingers, her work seeks to transform anxious energy into tangible works of
Recipient of the Lowenstein Arts Management Prize. _________________________________ A BRIGHT FUTURE seeks to evoke new understandings of value, reuse, and material, centred around my utopian ideal of a sustainable future. Through methodologies of collection, frugality, and recontextualisation, my series of
QUIET CURIOSITIES: EXPLORING PERSONAL REVERIE THROUGH COLLECTED ASSEMBLAGE AND PARALLEL PAINTING. My art practice combines assemblage and painting – transforming overlooked materials, found objects and personal artefacts into a visual language that evokes curiosity and wonder. The paraphernalia of everyday
Mary Oliphant Award Winner Tanya Cubric (b.1991 Montréal) is a multidisciplinary artist from the Balkan-Diaspora currently working and living in Melbourne. As someone who has lived in a number of different countries, her practice is very much entangled around her
This Masters project, through small-scale graphite drawings, explores the intersection of public and private personas through the elevation of mundane moments. By carefully rendering scenes from everyday life based on snapshot photography, I highlight the vulnerability and sincerity that emerge
WooJai Lee’s practice is centered around materials. Through material experimentations, he searches for the hidden potential of ordinary material. By transforming the materials into unconventional applications of furniture, interior elements, and sculptures, WooJai challenges the stereotypical ways of working with
A mass of cloud: Unveiling the self through intuition and painting. “I often don’t know how to express my thoughts and feelings in words.” “I often strive for perfection, both in myself and in my artwork.” “When confronted with highly
DUAL IDENTITY. The Language of Materials: Memory and Identity in Contemporary Art examines the interplay between identity and cultural heritage by exploring different materials and cultural collective experiences. Ya Juan’s experience incorporating contemporary techniques through her creation of large-scale oil
Becoming a Shell My Master’s project is a ceramic sculpture series that explores the fluid and uncertain nature of identity shaped by cross-cultural experience. Moving from China to Australia unsettled my sense of belonging and made me aware of the
KNOCK ON VOID employs a multidisciplinary approach, utilising culturally specific objects to manifest the concept of emptiness within Taoism. By creating a series of discrete objects within the context of traditional Go game, scroll paintings, and bamboo slips, the project
My artistic practice focuses on ceramic sculpture, embodying the complementary relationship between logical thought and intuitive making. The works record the traces of my gestures and movements, reflecting the dynamic and ongoing dialogue between myself and the clay. This process
The project is a mixed-media installation documenting the passage of time and space, particularly during the journey from home to Australia. This was inspired by a moment during a car trip when everything familiar seemed to regress ten years. Through
THE TACTILITY OF NOSTALGIA: Exploring the healing power of maternal energy by using the narrative expression of contemporary jewellery. My MFA project explores the intimacy that exists between my mother and I, and the healing that comes from maternal energy
这个项目对探索家的数字化软件来寻找记忆和收藏之间的联系，的项目还包括我在重建过程中的使用过程。 我的作品为基础，制作项目的，并制作视频，以扩大与观众的创作范围和日常联系范围，以唤起与时俱进的场景。感觉离场感是席位实践创作的关键要素。出现的情绪，看似乡愁传达出一种个性化的情绪。 随着工作的推进，我的制作场景设置在一个更接近的时期，软件中的现在逐渐成为我物理世界的延伸。 李玉萌，数字家庭，2022 李玉萌，数字家庭，2022 李玉萌，数字家庭，2022 李玉萌，数字家庭，2022
My monster friends. Everyone has childhood memories in their hearts, and those innocent times are like candies with different flavors that accompany us as we grow. When I was a child, my vivid imagination enabled me to frequently transform the
FLOW: Embodying aesthetic experience through process-based analogue photography This heuristic investigation uses process-based analogue photography to embody my aesthetic responses to life experiences. Informed by theoretical readings in cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and art, the research aims to harness the merging of
