RESEARCH ON GOLD FOIL Yuko’s practice centres on the poetic potential of gold foil—a material that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Through her work, she explores how this fragile metal leaf can give new life to overlooked materials, revealing
does a sticker make me good? i return to childhood memories where stickers functioned as a currency for achievement. a curated band-aid. a brightly adhesive sign that i had done something right. i can’t quite explain the fixation. i think
ORDER & CHAOS delves into transformation, spiritual healing, and the belief in a higher self through my unique perspective on spirituality and the search for purpose. Inspired by alchemy, spiritual philosophy, and fantastical themes, this project emphasizes my personal philosophy
Awarded the 2025 Sunshine Print Artspace, OBSA Award IN METRO is a varied edition stone lithograph with LEDs and LCD screens, that uses the site of the city to explore the diversity of coexisting human experiences. The high concentration of
A POSTCARD TO NATURE – AN APPRECIATION FOR THE NATURAL WORLD My work engages with nature, aiming to capture an appreciation for life and celebrate the beauty in the world around us. It explores my personal connection to the natural
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Jack Willet Industry Engagement Award, 2025 Memory Transplants is a collection of paintings based on my grandparents’ photographic slides that explores identity, cultural memory, and the knowledge passed down and lost through generations of migration. Through
SCAR TISSUE This body of work reimagines the car beyond its associations with function, speed and masculinity, framing it instead as a site of seduction, fragility, and care. Working with salvaged car panels, the approach treats them as sculptural surfaces
Working across drawing, painting and sculpture, I investigate spatial, material and hierarchical approaches to making and reconfiguring things to become artworks. An investigation of conditions ensues; conditions of the gallery, materials, sculpture, painting… And what happens when we fall between these
Human agent: AN ENTANGLED ALMAGAMATION OF CUMULATIVE EXPERIENCE: The experience of being aware of being. The experience of relating to natural forces. EMBODIED MATTER That which is the vital foundation is fundamentally intricate and non-finite. Prioritising
Of Figure, Feather, and the Pursuit of a Fable | Encapsulating the Invisible Illness Experience through the Intersection of Painting and Allegory My area of artistic inquiry explores how material, the natural world, and figurative manipulation can intersect to
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Alpha 60 Prize, 2025 THE AVIARY The Aviary is an investigation of memory as a simulacrum: the notion that memory is reconstructive, simulatory, and slippery. The concept of the performance arrived to the artist in the
AWARD WINNER – BDS Sculpture Prize for outstanding folio, 2025 HOLD ON TO YOURSELF unfolds as a space of tension between protection and exposure, vulnerability and strength. The work invites a process of returning to one’s authentic self —
FIRE-BORN MOODS (2025) applies instinctually creative practice to depict landscapes of personal significance. Over this three-year period of study, the landscapes of my backyard and the Dandenong Creek have taken over my creative subconscious. Townsend describes her similar experience as
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Adele Wilkes Industry Engagement Award, 2025 I HAVE DETAINED YOUR ATTENTION My practice begins where systems break. In the noise of the glitch, in the unfinished code, in the loops that never resolve, I find a
A Ogierman, ‘Cascading’, 2025, sterling silver, 2.1 x 17.8 x 2.2cm. UNTITLED/UNRAVELLING Untitled/Unravelling uses a collection of jewellery objects to reflect and highlight the malleability of the human body, exploring ways the body moves and interacts with its surroundings.
AWARD WINNER – Breaking the Mold Sculpture Prize for experimentation in the Sculpture Studio, 2025 I work across mediums to create intriguing and playful encounters that puncture the common sense of capitalism. I interpret economic analysis through intuitive associations
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Bold and the Beautiful prize, 2025
The material language of identity is the catalyst of my artistic inquiry into embodied connection between people, animals, and environment. This body of work combines painting, performance, natural materials, and found objects to encourage empathy and embodiment beyond the self.
IN THE COMPANY OF PESTS is a set of mixed media woodblock and screenprint images expressing frustration at the level of sexual agency granted to women as the subjects of art. Birds appear throughout the works as a metaphor for
UNADULTERATED Unadulterated is the beginning of a collection that focuses on words that I love. Unadulterated, rage, death, worship, longing, filth, rot, lust, gratification, sickness, torture, gore, hate and solace The collection explores ‘bad emotions’. How do we act when
MIND, BODY AND VEHICLE My research engages with ideas relating to internet culture and all of the strange dark absurdities of being online. I am fascinated by the stark polarities and extremes of the online experience, the way in which
Highly commended: ACAE Gallery Award Some beginnings are not chosen but given — and once given, we begin to see, and begin to choose. My practice centres on the notion of Place — a geography that also carries memory, emotion, and
The Work of Quiet Hands considers the importance of prioritising care. While certain individuals like Beggs may place an emphasis on care, in general it is not highly valued. In contemporary society, women, immigrants, people of colour and other oppressed
Undoing the Self: Memory, Temporality, and the Transformative Act of Painting My work unfolds within the fluid terrain of memory, identity, and the human condition. Rooted in autobiography yet reaching toward shared experience, my practice explores memory’s capacity to distort,
Project Abstract My oil painting series explores the spiritual world within and its profound connection to nature, reflecting an ongoing journey of self-healing and transformation. Through rhythmic brushstrokes, layered textures, and flowing colours, I visualise the invisible energy that bridges
Spliced is a collection of Photographs, Paintings, and costumes related to the theme of the characterisation of different parts of my own personality portrayed in the primary form of crocheted masks and costumes. Each costume represents a core
THE DELICACY OF LIFE Chelsea Parkinson’s practice investigates interconnection between species, exploring how the structures and gestures of the natural world can mirror human emotion, behaviour, and vulnerability. Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, and textile-based installation, her work often draws
SMELL OF uncovers the relationship between olfaction and memory. A materialisation of memory, the mixed-media installation centres around the scent of Yu Yee oil – a traditional Chinese medicated oil – as its primary element of the work. Drawing from
This practice-led research originates from childhood memories of crossing by ferry from my birthplace to Hong Kong. The ocean on those journeys was a mesmerising spectacle—a vast, tranquil expanse of shifting blues and greens. This personal history is now starkly
AWARD WINNER – Sculpture Workshop Prize for excellence in the Sculpture workshop, 2025 I crawl with the bugs in the dirt nothing I love would require work https://www.instagram.com/bilibear_/
REMEMBERING is an investigation of the metaphor of the body as ‘home’, positioned as a vessel carrying ancestral memory, pain and reclamation. An offering into a portal of sound, video, movement and ritual, I explore how women of diaspora navigate
AWARD WINNER – Sculpture Workshop Prize for excellence in the Sculpture workshop, 2025 TO/FROM SMITHEREENS – Some time ago, I watched as a small cataclysm occurred. While walking down by the creek, something impossibly bright fell from the sky,
SENSING THE WORLD: Guided by a cultural and spiritual perspective rooted in my Sri Lankan and Buddhist background, this practice-led research explores how mindfulness and presence can foster new ways of seeing. It aims to reinterpret the ordinary as extraordinary
Awarded the 2025 Baldessin Studio, OBSA Graduate Award feeling/feeling is a site-responsive series of work exploring the sensory and emotive dimensions of landscape through photography, material, sonic and textural inquiry. The works form a unified portrait of three areas of remnant
‘SOMETIMES ITS DIFFICULT EVEN FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I’VE BECOME. AND HARDER STILL TO REMEMBER WHAT I ONCE WAS.’ Painting to me exists not just as a language of self-expression but also as a means of self-understanding. Personal experience
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Bold and the Beautiful prize, 2025 @namestevibes Namaste, welcome beautiful lightbeings! Are You ready to Ascend? Liberate Your mind and open up your Heart. Embrace Me. Accept Me as your Leader and I will guide
INTERTWINED: finding the sacred in the everyday Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the
Eliza Baker is a Melbourne-based artist (b. 2003) originally from rural New South Wales. Through her practice, Baker seeks to transform intimate emotional experiences into shared encounters, using art as a conduit for connection and resilience. Presented across gallery,
Fragmented Identities as Hybridity. Searching for belonging in a cultural “third space”. Eliza Byrne’s practice examines the cultural “third space,” where identity is shaped not within a single culture but through the interplay of multiple cultural worldviews. This space emerges
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Peter Westwood Legendary T’shirt Award, 2025 GRIDS One day, I noticed it. I cannot remember where or when, or even in what form, but suddenly, grids were everywhere. I have since been aiming to understand grids
Longing For Home: Painted Fragments of Landscapes Left Behind ‘Longing for Home’ Is a series of landscapes that stem from a place of grief and a yearning for home. The series follows the loss of my Grandparents, Vincent Brian McKanny
THE WAY HOME is a series of mixed media paintings that explore the idea of home as both a place and a feeling. Each work captures a friend, family member or significant place, painted on fabrics that I have naturally
Award: Fiona Myer Ceramic Award Award: Stockroom Kyneton Exhibition Award: Walker Ceramics Award for Academic Excellence THINGS presents new ceramic works from artist Elspeth Rowell, challenging the confines of Western classification systems through an installation of objects
The tacit, the implied and the felt: relinquishing control to ambiguous, intuitive and experiential ways of knowing. Excessive control over outcome-driven processes and high standards of perfectionism can often feel oppressive, limiting, and restrictive, trapping the artist within the constraints
Awarded the 2025 Firestation Print Studio / Arts National Melbourne Annual Young Printmakers Graduate Scholarship My arts practice draws creative inspiration from Australia’s natural environment with a particular interest in the Merri creek, the Victorian Coastline and natural spaces in
Essay by Gina Corridore for Contextualising Practice Needlework is a multidimensional discipline that has historically served as a socialised cultural tradition, an artistic practice, and a form of feminised domestic labour. Needlework has been co-opted as a device to propagate
Essay by Maree Nikimaya for Contextualising Practice Content warning: This essay discusses domestic violence, suicide, violence, and trauma From 1995 to 2000, my mother, father, and brother journeyed from South Sudan, which was on the brink of civil war,
Essay by Angelique Ogierman for Contextualising Practice Acknowledgement I would like to begin by acknowledging the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations, whose unceded land I live, study and craft on. I pay my respects to Elders past and present,
Essay by Eliza Baker for Contextualising Practice Foreword In 2024, the deaths of several people close to me marked a point of rupture in my life and my art practice. These losses destabilised the systems I had internalised, systems
Essay by Melanie Sky for Contextualising Practice Acknowledgment I acknowledge the Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung, and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the lands on which I live, work, and study. As I
Essay by Teagan Lown for Contextualising Practice Acknowledgement To begin, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live, study and practise art, the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung peoples and the Bunurong / Boon Wurrung
Essay by Millie Hopton for Contextualising Practice Positionality Statement I am a white, straight, cisgender woman born in 1999, who has spent their whole life in Australia. I come from a stable, middle-class background; my parents remain together, and
Essay by Shing Hei Nathan Man As a queer Hong Kong immigrant residing and working in so-called Australia, I navigate the affective residues of displacement, repression, and racialised hyper-visibility. “Clinical psychology tells us that trauma is the ultimate killer. Memories
Essay by Indigo Ripper-Stranieri for Contextualising Practice Introduction / Acknowledgment I offer my respect to the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waterways on which I conduct my research, study, and art practice, the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Worung
Essay by Toni Vallance for Contextualising Practice The requirement to write about my work fills me with a small amount of dread, as I suspect it does for many artists. It is not that I do not like writing
Essay by Sara Jajou for Contextualising Practice ‘The gaze…appears as an adversary, a knife, the evil eye…’ (Neugebauer (eds) et al 2021: 2) The gaze is a knife pointed at my body. It seeks to dissect and dismember bodies
Essay by Zosia Slifirski Duckett for Contextualising Practice Prologue Two years ago, on a cold wet afternoon in early September, in a moment of strange clarity after a shower, I took a photograph of my reflection in the foggy bathroom
Essay by Anna McCauley for Contextualising Practice ‘Living money and dying humans, metal as tender as skin and skin as hard as metal, taking hands, and dancing round, and round, and round, with no way ever of stopping; the
Essay by Luke Jones for Contextualising Practice Material > Inertia > Entropy > Becoming In contemporary installation and sculptural practices, the artist’s role is increasingly seen as that of a facilitator of dynamic relationships between material, process, and
Essay by Alicia Crowhurst for Contextualising Practice Introduction Transmutation is the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form. This essay argues that theatre grants you the faculties to forge transmutative capacity and, thus, engage in a practice of continual
Essay by Michelle McLachlan for Contextualising Practice In an era where visual information is incessantly mediated, edited, and curated, the question of what constitutes ‘truth’ in perception has become increasingly complex. Artists working with responsive and interactive materials —those that
STARSONG starsong is both a meditation and a map – an attempt to locate the self within a vast, interconnected cosmos. Creating this work is an ongoing process of connecting the dots, and witnessing the darkness between them. In this process
Awarded the 2025 Megalo Print Studio Graduate Residency Prize, and the 2025 RMIT Technician Award
AWARD WINNER – BDS Sculpture Prize for outstanding folio, 2025 GRID GAME (2025) is a playable board game for viewers to engage and interact with. The objective of this game is to design the best city within the provided
”THE PROLIFERATION OF GROWING PAINS” Tracking the emotional expansion of girlhood through fragile ceramic forms . . . In “The Proliferation of Growing Pains,” I examine the tender yet uneasy process of emotional growth. Through the ceramic sculptures of broken
BEYOND THE SURFACE is a series of objects that aim to translate my ongoing inquiry into how we perceive. It explores our tendency to form judgments based on surface-level information, and the qualities that compel us to look closer, moving
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO 621 Artist Space Ehibition Award, 2025 @621artistspace RETURN ELSEWHERE explores the rural Australian landscape through investigation into simultaneously known and unknown environments. The works depict eerie distorted landscapes with recurring subjects of roads and trees, places
NO THROUGH ROAD: THE DEAD ENDS OF MEMORY LANE explores themes of memory, place, and the complex evolving relationship between physical environments and emotional attachment. Using cropped imagery of Australian scenes, specifically from Adelaide and Melbourne neighbourhoods, the miniature landscapes
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Isquared Gallery Exhibition Award, 2025 A Woman’s Work is Never Done A Woman’s Work is Never Done (2025) employs needlework as a tool to examine the historical and social reality of women’s labour. It also speaks
Home,swim home/游泳回家 This practice-led research project uses photography to explore the connections and tensions between home, distance, and memory. The project originates from my personal experience as a Chinese international student and an only child due to the one–child policy.
Awarded the 2025 Richard Harding RMIT Graduate Residency Award YOU ARE A WOMAN WITH A MAN INSIDE HER HEAD WATCHING THAT WOMAN, WATCHING A WOMAN AWARE OF THE MAN INSIDE WATCHING HER. Halle (They/She) is a multidisciplinary artist who creates
RESPONSE-ABILITY This research project aims to explore how an interdisciplinary practice—creating with and in response to Earthworms—can contribute to a growing awareness of human and nature relationships. Donna Haraway’s sympoiesis (creating-with) and the concept of mimesis are central to the
Hannah Luk-Finucane is a Cantonese/ ‘Australian’ artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Working reflexively, their practice explores layered diasporic experiences, studies of the body and memory. Through their practice, they are working to create spaces of ritual intimacy, intended to foster
A PLACE TO LEARN AND LIE 2025 @dirtybyharry Amidst a tumultuous world full of inspiration and tragedy, I wanted to create a space that offers refuge — a haven where you are not required to know, fix, or lead. You may
DECONSTRUCTION TODAY: OF COURSE I EAT THE APPLE AFTERWARDS To get at the good stuff. Writing fast, and for at least half an hour, but more like 1 hour. Yet the clock should not be paid attention to. Think of
THE PLACES WE CANNOT RETURN TO Paintings of Memories Reignited, Exploring the Absence of Him. This project explores the relationship between memory, emotion, and personal loss. Anchored in my own lived experience, it reflects on the fragmented nature of memories
PATTERN OVERLOAD Frequently inspired by optical, fractal, modular, and psychedelic art, I create colourful pattern-based works that merge organic and geometric formations. I primarily work with mirror panels and coloured vinyl to create an array of modular and rhythmic formations
In Brine I was an egg, an egg developed in my mom while she was growing in her mom’s womb. The understanding that I’ve been brewing for that long is mind-scrambling. I am a pickled egg steeped in generational brine.
Walk through the meadows of time, discover what’s left. Observe how the earth is endless, eternal and unforgiving. Watch as the world evolves and mutates, new life forms from death, on a repeating cycle, forever. BEYOND DYSTOPIA What will
Born into a post-internet world, I have been online for as long as I can remember. I used to believe that logging on meant logging out of the “real” world. However, I now see that this binary framing, offline-online, real-virtual,
Hi! My name is Isabell Maria Bilous, I am a Romanian Mix Media Artist, I have been practicing art for nearly 7 years, and I specialise in Printmaking (specifically Aquatint and Mezzotint). My inspiration comes from my experience as a
IN MY IMAGE In My Image explores painting as a space where memory stirs rather than settles; where the past flickers in fragments, half-remembered and half-imagined. Working with found and family photographs, I use paint to blur the edges between
THEATRE OF ONE explores interiors and exteriors. When masks are worn, a tension is created through the inclusion, alteration and omission of information. The video works present ambiguous masked characters in equally ambiguous domestic locations. Paired with videos of text
A ROOM OF HER OWN presents a collection of oil paintings that investigate themes of femininity, identity, and self-presentation within contemporary youth culture and queer spaces. Drawing from her own staged photographic imagery, Ivy depicts intimate scenes such as portraits,
Search for the elusive homely This project is a reflection on distance and unfamiliarity, more specifically nostalgia (distance from the past) and exile (distance from home), how in this distance, things can become unfamiliar and lost. In my work, I
A Perfect Failure An installation of multiple works, exploring the themes of Empathy, Empowerment, Family, Social Justice and Housing (especially the failures of the private sector and government.) Through creating a large painting / drawing using hessian and plaster, I
Highly Commended: Fagan and Corser Award for Figurative Painting (previously the Tolarno Award) GO WITH THE FLOW MAN is an oil and acrylic painting on canvas that explores the notion of the awareness of thought. The painting is about how our thoughts are
MY DRAGONS Mixed media, 2025 This work explores the artist’s personal experience of growing up with mental health struggles, mental illness and mental disability. This work aims to communicate to people that they are not alone in their experiences and
BLUSHING LACE- Content warning: the work discusses gender-based violence Blushing Lace explores the rising issue of violence against women in Australia, drawing from my personal experiences of abuse by my father and other adult men during my childhood. Through this
AN EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY OF VASTNESS The city exists in an uncanny liminal state, where belonging feels impossible, pressed beneath national identity, political handovers and
Tender is the Flesh (2025) engages with ideas of skin as both surface and material agency: a site where identity, memory, and trauma are inscribed, but also where discomfort, estrangement, and instability emerge. While I continue to explore the intimate relationship
Awarded the 2025 Print Council of Australia RMIT Graduate Award EGG AND SHELLS is a large-scale copperplate etching that captures an impression of the southern hemisphere night sky as seen from my suburb, densely populated with stars. I believe copperplate etching
OPEN EYES AND CLOSED DOORS explores the intimate connections between place, memory and acceptance. The diptych provides a glimpse into my internal and private experiences of chronic illness and trauma, through the most vulnerable physical spaces I occupy, and the
My approach to being creative, particularly painting, has always been a self-soothing act. Without it I would simply be incomplete. Work in Progress is a reflection of the tumultuous relationship I have had with my mental health and internal dialogue
ENERGISING THE SPIRIT: MOMENTUM AND MINDFULNESS IN THE ART OF EXERCISE AND MOVEMENT EXPLORED THROUGH PAINTING Jocelyn is an emerging artist specialising in mixed media painting, focusing on themes of energy, movement, and emotional expression. With a solid background in
CATHARSIS Humans have entered the epoch of self-surveillance and datafication through the use of everyday objects. This practice-led research project seeks to critique surveillance and data capitalism, and its apparatuses of control, including its impact on selfhood. The research
UNPLAYED MEMORIES focuses on empty playgrounds and tiled passageways in ordinary daylight. In these paintings, I use both vivid and pastel colours to shift familiar environments into something slightly dream-like. Slides and corridors appear paused in time, holding traces of
AWARD WINNER – Artists for Kid’s Culture (AKC) Gallery Exhibition Prize, 2025 THE MOTHER OF ALL MESSES My work explores transformation, materiality, and memory. The process is intuitive, led by touch, chance, and the conversations between materials. I’m drawn
I am an emerging visual artist specialising in drawing and currently working in multiple mixed media forms. I explore the concept of the ‘inner child’ and inner worlds’, and reflect on reminiscing memories throughout my childhood. Using old school
Kepsibel’s creative practice is characterised by a repetitive and ritualistic engagement with the material world. Unbound by a commitment to conventional materials, she develops idiosyncratic processes that evolve through time and surface. Her paintings, sculptures, and installations are confessional in
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Peter Westwood Legendary T’shirt Award, 2025 No Love Labours An exploration of familial tension and the burden of care through the use of drawing and writing. This project reflects the period of coming-of-age that results in
RUN THE GAMUT / RIDE THE LINE is a dedication to the between state, the not quite here or there, the process, the liminal. I have spent a lot of time on the train in the past few years; the
Highly commended: ACAE Gallery Award This project begins with refusal and spite – the refusal to confess, to perform, to be legible. In Filipino Disneyland, a confessional booth becomes an inverted theatre of devotion. The viewer is drawn into dialogue with
FLUID AND UNFOLDING invites you to romanticise the mundane. Love between queer and trans, disabled and neurodiverse people, exists in a realm of its own. Small, sacred moments of care-giving are interwoven into the queer experience. To chosen family, friends,
Laura Sharkrainbow is a small, otherworldly phenomenon believed to be caused by the interaction of electromagnetically charged particles in the upper atmosphere. Historically this has taken the form of works in ink and oil, though recently a new
Imaginary Suburbia merges mundane suburban landscapes with unconscious, spontaneous imagery, reimaging distinctive suburban landscapes into magical realms. Favouring the use of misplaced animals and fruit in combination with mass-produced suburban scenes and infrastructure, I invite playful, nostalgic readings as well
My name is Layla, I am a printmaking artist who specialises in digital printing with complex installations. My work focuses mainly on the development of the self and processing my emotions through my pieces. My practice often involves complex layering
PRIVILEGE We are overwhelmed by endless streams of information, often forgetting to pause and reflect. Late-stage capitalism, nationalist ideologies and global conflicts place our anxieties above our gratitude. Amidst this chaos, we must remember to reconnect with the sublime. Looking
THE TRACE OF THE TEAR is a sculptural neckpiece born from Lilian Fung’s own healing journey. Rooted in research on the crystallisation of dried human tears under a microscope, it gives form to what is often unseen — grief, memory,
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Bold and the Beautiful prize, 2025 We Gather, We Rise, We Fall. This large-scale robotic fabric installation reflects on the cycles of nature, their duration, rhythm, and caring reliability. Its scale intentionally includes the human body
Awarded the 2025 44 Frame Factory Award My work explores climate change, the environment, and the spiritual elements of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. I am majoring in printmaking and explore a wide range of styles through screen printing. My
I WANT TO GROW OLD WITH ALL OF YOU Lou Wheeler is a Narrm/Melbourne based emerging metalwork artist with a special interest in ancient and traditional craft practices. Lou’s practice prioritises fundamental yet demanding techniques such as hand engraving and
Robin Kingston Award for Contemporary Abstraction When folding chairs In production, installation or storage, materials behave as provisional alignments with their given materiality. Instability becomes a generative force; a condition through which form emerges in negotiation rather than imposition. What if sculpture
Crown your child self with gratitude . Maaike Schipper is a printmaker and interdisciplinary artist from rural New South Wales, currently based in Melbourne. Guided by feminist frameworks of care, her practice embraces the slow, imperfect, and attentive nature of
PILLARS OF THE MIND explores how intuition and intentionality informs ones decision making throughout the painting process. My practice is inspired by my passion for experimentation, movement and curiosity of materiality and colour. My work is created through an instinctive
Madelyn McKenzie is an emerging artist based in Naarm/Melbourne, working primarily across ceramics, sculpture and installation. She has just completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at RMIT University whilst also participating in Craft Victoria’s Fresh! Fellowship Program. Madelyn’s Honours research
Fault Lines is a reflection on the ways in which objects and memories intertwine, becoming a vessel for communication and stimulating recollection. Guided by ideas of post-memory and solastalgia, this series explores the fragility of one’s memory as it ages—an
Sundowning—the term for increased confusion in the late afternoon and evening for people with Alzheimer’s. Sundowning reflects on the tensions between permanence and impermanence and intends to resist modernist ideals of monolithic permanence. As its title suggests, Sundowning is
Highly commended: All the Very Best Award Chapman and Bailey Award for Excellence in Contemporary Painting The Garland Award STEEL KARKADE- Analysing the strength and brutality of diasporic Black women’s experiences through afrosurrealism The primary purpose of Steel Karkade is
ECHOES BETWEEN WORLDS: Reflections, Ephemerality, and the Presence of Kami Marina Yamazaki is an artist who lives, works, and studies in Naarm/Melbourne. She explores the connection between the spiritual and physical. She interacts with the world of kami and spirits
All the Very Best Award BUFFER: WRESTLING DIGITAL HYPERABUNDANCE AND THE PROJECTED CORPOREAL, OR: HELP!! THERE’S PLASTIC IN MY F*CKING BRAIN 😱😱😱 My entire living memory has been in the proximity of screens; conception beyond is unimaginable. Corporeality has been
IT NEVER RAINS ON GOOGLE MAPS is a project exploring the act of digitally “dropping a pin” on Google Maps. Google Maps being an application built for navigation that I repurpose as a tool for artistic exploration. Street View also
I.V9000 (IN VITRO 9000) reimagines human reproduction through an absurdist, monochrome lens by merging found footage, stock imagery, AI-generated visuals, and animation into a surreal baby-making factory. The work explores what happens when reproduction becomes fully technologised. What are the
I MADE IT COZY SO YOU’D FEEL THE TENSION This installation transforms a domestic scene into the site of protest and reclamation. Born from a conversation in the first year of my degree that exhibited patriarchal bias, the installation asks
Red Gallery Exhibition Award The Angel in The House: an exploration of complexities and contradictions within contemporary femininity. Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother
Award: Garland Award for Innovative Storied Object ECHOES ACROSS THE AEGEAN My work explores the connection between my two homes, Crete Greece and Melbourne Australia. While backpacking in 2024, I fell in love with a potter from a village
X marks the spot: Traversing the tension between Liminal spaces, The ‘Australian Gothic’, and a permeable reality X MARKS THE SPOT is a large-scale, multidisciplinary installation that critically engages with the aesthetic and psychological dimensions of the “Australian Gothic”, questioning
Hannah Yost (MOXIE) is based in Melbourne, Australia. She completed a diploma of visual arts (2022) Bachelor of Fine Arts at RMIT University in 2025, and has run multiple creative workshops, hosted creative art events and collaborated with local Melbourne
MOSAIC This collection of works, created using various printmaking techniques, explores Syrian civilisation and culture through the metaphor of a treasured box. Throughout history, Syria has embraced dozens of civilisations, just as the box in this project embraces many of
I LOVE MY SISTER investigates the fragile boundaries between childhood memory, safety, imagination, and grief. Through a studio practice rooted in play and collection, deconstructed recollections are transformed into paintings that blur realism with dreamlike reconstruction. This project reinterprets a
“KINDS OF CONNECTIONS” I’m Poppy Clarke and I’m a multidisciplinary figurative painter. This project is an exhibition about kinds of connections. It is a series of portraits on panels and canvas to remind and inspire a renewed sense of excitement
WE PART FOREVER IN TOMORROW’S SUNSHINE（我们在阳光灿烂的明天永别）is a large-scale oil painting with gold leaf, focusing on water and reflections to explore themes of farewell and memory. The work was created as the artist prepared to leave Melbourne, reflecting on the emotions
ACAE Gallery Award: winner THERE YOU ARE (2025) brings together individually titled works across various mediums, including an installation, a short film documentary and paintings. This research explores themes of memory and belonging, while engaging with the act of cultural preservation through
BUTTER FACE This practice-led research project examines the performative role of gender within contemporary heteronormative scripts using boudoir parody performance that combines papier-mâché, soundscape, costume, and movement. The research stems from my personal frustrations with modern dating—both online and
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Bold and the Beautiful prize, 2025 BODY PIECE is an installation combining abstract sculptural forms with figurative video projection. Positioned as a refusal of the commodified female body, the work distorts and fragments the feminine form into
Sub 27 Exhibition Award Winner BODIES HOLD This body of work explores ideas of containment and boundaries. I am interested in how painting acts as a kind of vessel to hold and carry my inner life. These mysteries that I
This practice-led research draws on a dream world that I carry inside me; a mythological world that I’m uncovering piece by piece. Using automatic drawing, sculpting, and writing methods—derived from an archive of found materials and chance encounters—I let my
Wayne Conduit Award Sub 27 Exhibition Award Winner PSYCHOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES: TRANSLATING INNER STATES INTO PAINTED FORM Rufus Punton is a painter and printmaker. His work reflects his rural country upbringing drawing inspiration from vintage photographs from his grandparents’ collection, depicting
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Bold and the Beautiful prize, 2025 REALM REALM is an immersive digital mural exploring how diasporic memory fragments and reforms across generations. This expansive landscape, created in Procreate and Endless Paper, features interconnected scenes floating in
PEACE AND LOVE AND BEAUTY AND FREEDOM AND… ‘Peace And Love And Beauty And Freedom And Love And Regret And’ was my debut solo show that ran for a month in October this year at MOM Gallery in Thornbury. The
WHEN THE EARTH REMEMBERS is a gestural act of salvation, a primal ritual that confronts personal trauma by dissolving the self into a liminal, elemental landscape. The title signifies a profound connection between the body and the earth, suggesting that
BETWEEN MOMENT AND MEMORY. I am intrigued by the space between experiencing a moment and holding it as memory. Why do we hold certain moments in our minds and not others? How does the energy of lived experience transform into
APPARITIONS is a provocation of the Western colonial gaze and the construction of the Other. In the words of Daniel Neugebauer in Counter Readings of the Body, ‘the gaze…appears as an adversary, a knife, the evil eye…’. The work interrogates the
Scent, Silver, and the Self… Sarah Austin is an emerging Naarm/Melbourne based artist whose practice explores the relationship between the body, personal ritual, and the sensory language of adornment. Her work considers how objects worn close to the skin can
TENDERTHREADS: This installation centres on the tactile and emotional potentials of material. Using found textiles and yarn, tenderthreads unfolds as an exploration of how emotion, memory, presence and experience can be woven through the meditative act of crochet. Through the
TOOLS explores the deep connection between creator and creation. As art becomes further enveloped by trend and algorithm, the human element becomes lost. Consumed like air, rather than heard like speech. This series of representational paintings aims to bring attention to
Shang Gao is an artist based in Melbourne whose work focuses on the reclamation of materials and the simulation of natural textures. The core of her research is to explore how materials generate new visual and tactile languages in the
PAINTING THE DARK ECOLOGY engages with the ecological crisis not only as an environmental issue but as a cultural one, confronting life and death, the aftermath of Colonialism, extinction and the degradation of habitats. It manifests as Vanitas symbolism, distressed
PAINTING THE DARK ECOLOGY engages with the ecological crisis not only as an environmental issue but as a cultural one, confronting life and death, the aftermath of Colonialism and the sixth mass extinction event seen through the lens of post-humanism.
Nathan Man is a Hong Kong artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Working across installation, printmaking, and object-based practice, their work examines the slippages between language, identity, and cultural translation within diasporic and queer experience. ACTS OF SERVICE is an installation combining
Shona McMahon is a Naarm based artist who has a print informed multi-disciplinary practice. Quintessentially, Shona explores her need for belonging, of finding place, in the natural or other world, and in doing so advocates nurturing of, and connection to,
WITHIN COMFORT is an ethereal and poetic textile-based installation that reflects on the dialogue between self and the immaterial. This work is grounded in emotion and personal experiences of finding comfort in familiar spaces, where materials engage with presence and
Award: Ceramic Club Award A Kind of Quiet Heat Terracotta, slip, oxides and glaze, 2025 Sophie Gemmill is a Melbourne based potter creating work that lives somewhere between the ancient and the imagined. Working primarily with terracotta, she embraces
WHERE HEARTS ONCE SLEPT is a deeply personal exploration of memory, longing, and childhood. Through these paintings, I invite viewers into the emotional landscapes of my own recollections; places where light, colour, and feeling intertwine. My work acts as a
My creative process is guided by exploration, embracing the unexpected rather than adhering to predetermined design. Improvisation and chance shape my engagement with materials as I fold, cut, forge, and solder. Working primarily with metal, I use techniques such as
WINNER – THE MOAT Video award, 2025 Su Shar Latt is a video-based performance artist who explores the relationship between her body and her past. Drawing on concepts relating to seeking refuge and its lasting effects, she investigates how the past is never
Awarded the 2025 Print Council of Australia RMIT Graduate Award Insight investigates the grounding qualities of the Australian atmosphere and landscape, focusing on the interconnectedness of land, sea, and sky within the Dandenong Ranges and along the Victorian coastline. Through
4 WHEN U SPIN a mixed-media installation exploring the experience of spinning thoughts. In this work, 3D printed flower-like sculptures rotate continuously, casting dynamic shadows across walls covered in bright, busy collages of urban imagery and colour. At times in
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Joseph Beuys Cafe Drawing Award, 2025 Tate Maxwell is an artist working in the expanded field of drawing. In a recent departure from representational charcoal drawings, Maxwell has begun to explore spatial potentiality, quality, and
AWARD WINNER – BDS Sculpture Prize for outstanding folio, 2025 Teagan is a sculpture-based artist with a vested interest in repurposing and reimagining overlooked and discarded objects from her immediate environments. Her practice is characterised by an intuitive and
Thani Fee is a multi disciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), originally from the north west coast of Tasmania. Working within the expanded field her process driven practice is instinct-led and materially engaged. Drawing from abstract expressionism, she works through
A ROOM OF MY OWN This year I’ve had home of my own – an apartment with a courtyard garden – that has been transformative for both my life and my practice. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, having a room (and
Awarded the 2025 Gold Street Studios & OBSA Award TRACING MEMORIES, for our daughters, is a project that reflects on the journey of immigrant Vietnamese women and their untold stories of hybridity and migration into Australia. The importance of highlighting
Chapman and Bailey Award for Excellence in Contemporary Painting THE INTRA-ACTION OF PAINTING: SURFACE, COLOUR, AND GESTURE AS EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE The Intra-Action of Painting presents a series of works that explore how abstraction, as a physical and material process,
Highly commended: All the Very Best Award RUIN “The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing. They’re something to look at on late-night TV. That’s all they are.” Raymond Carver
Wombs Enter my body and bear all it bears. Gaze upon me and meet the eyes that gaze This project, inspired by readings on surrogacy and feminist ethics, explores femininity through the lens of the Other. Curvilinear forms intertwine traces
Meow meow meow meow meow (Welcome to the digital realm) My practice explores the performance of self through digital media, using the screen as both a mirror and a stage. I record myself through tools like Photobooth and screen capture,
Untitled (Insomnia) In this series of drawings, I am materialising and transforming the affects evoked by the depression, numbness and suffocation in the illusional patterns that extruded in my mind and body during bouts of insomnia. My drawings are the
HIERARCHY This body of work explores the relationship between luxury brands and their monogram logos, reinterpreted through architectural forms that evoke sophistication and complexity. Created using a combination of painting and traditional drawing techniques, the series examines how luxury brands
Settlement and Refuge Settlement and Refuge is a materially grounded visual meditation on exile, tracing the psychological and relational consequences of forced migration. Through symbolic forms, devotional iconography, and layered collage, the project explores survivors guilt, longing for reunification, and
UTOPIA (REMIND ME) explores the significance of the object in connection to memory. The work comprises of 5 monuments made after significant objects from my personal spaces. The objects aren’t of inherent value or sentimentality, but I can’t let them
Fragment Of Affection Fragments of Affection is an ongoing series that traces the fragile relationship between melancholy, memory and tenderness through my recurring character SiSi ,a symbolic extension of my inner self. Across multiple panels and compositions. SiSi drifts through
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Prize Full Stop Framing Prize, 2025 ABSOLUTE CARE specimens of attention ‘Absolute Care (specimens of attention)’, is realised through a series of A5 sized drawings. The works meditate on the inability to truly feel constant within
THE LANGUAGE AFTER ME The Language After Me reconfigures the Five Constants of Confucian morality—ren, yi, li, zhi, xin—by reshaping their seal-script forms into grotesque, bodily structures. Using calligraphy ink on rice paper, the project explores how virtues that once
WINNER – THE LIBRARY Expanded Excellence Prize, 2025 My Body Flows with Natural Red Paint and Contraceptive and Aphrodisiac are a performative, experimental film installation exploring female embodied experience through blood, which is often tied to taboos, trauma, shame and
Fragments of Earthly Memory My work embodies a quiet alchemy of transformation, where natural elements become vessels of memory and protection. In Ritual Memory, four ritual vessels echo the cycles of fire, earth, water, and wind—each symbolizing a state of
MY HANDS EXIST AND WITH THEM I CREATE PROBLEMS AND ART. To grasp something is to care for it, to hold space for its weight, and to insist on its relevance.The dual meaning of the word grasp speaks to this intersection:
YOU COULD JUST NOT THINK ABOUT IT FOR FIVE YEARS I am interested in the melding of bodies, surgery, the sharing of fluids, and how printmaking practices can be used to explore this. Drawing upon past medical experiences, I want
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Bold and the Beautiful prize, 2025 the violent feminine : a ventilation of clothed trauma Tax Return [Iteration Three] and Subtotal Tax my resolved works as part of the 2025 gradshow, operate as mediations between material
Award: Fagan and Corser Award for Figurative Painting (previously the Tolarno Award) PAINTING THOSE I KNOW AND LOVE explores transformation, intimacy, and identity through painting. Drawing on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the work reflects on how relationships and selfhood continually evolve. After moving from
SAME SPIRITS NEW FORMS it’s all an echo / i sent myself long ago / same spirits new forms Gesture, light, and reflection fold into one another. Subtle disturbances become offerings; stillness unfolds into motion. Viewers participate in a quiet
