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
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
Helimlich: My Dear Little Grotto Hide me. Don’t look at me. Just let me lie here. Let me curl away under the comfort of my own security. I don’t want to leave here, and I can’t. It hurts me, and
Uniform: An auto-theoretical reflection on agency and conformity within schooling institutions as an adolescent girl with ADHD Uniform employs a combination of representational and abstract painting techniques, drawing, and repurposed school uniform textiles to research the interplay between gendered expectations,
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
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
PARTY PARASITE is a viral infection that can only be cured through song, dance and unorthodox medical procedures. The operations you must undergo Frankenstein the perfect vessel for your existence using internet culture. Through the fluidity of the internet you
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
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
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
SOMATAESTHESIA: EXPLORING THE INEXPRESSIBLE SENSATIONS OF CHRONIC ILLNESS THROUGH EXPANDED SPATIAL PRACTICE Despite thousands of years of research into the human body, so much of it remains—or is kept—a mystery. As someone living with chronic illness, these mysteries define every
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.
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.
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,
hush heresy heave (2025) Words are often clumsy in articulating the understanding of the body. This practice-led research project aims to explore how hysterical choreographies—across movement, language, and lens-based media—might critically engage with the bodily impacts of capitalist-driven terrains 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
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
ENCHANTED BY THE FEELING Enchanted by the Feeling reimagines intimacy through soft sculpture, self-portrait photography, and immersive installation. Employing play, performance, and fluidity as queer methodologies, Kate seeks creative new perspectives on the experience. Through embodied practice, these strategies facilitate
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
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
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
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
Between Two Worlds In this project, the tension between the fragility of rice paper and the resistance of linen installed in the gallery space visualises the silent, powerful current constituted of diaspora identity. It is a map of magnetic pulls
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
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
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
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
Garment of the Soul Rooted in my migration and separation from my motherland Iran to Australia, I seek to depict the emotional dissonance and suspended state of being between the two realms. Drawing inspiration from cultural symbolism and geographical landscapes,
WINNER – DRAWING STUDIO Block Projects Drawing Prize, 2025 MOUTHFUL – Post dinner languor washes over me. My belly replete, eyes droopy, the lingering taste of brie in my mouth. Days of preparation consumed in mouth-fulls. Everything’s packed up. Finally.
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
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
SECOND SKIN “As I stretch the hood over my face, I enter my second skin. Anonymity is my armour, self-expression is my tool, and with them I build my relationships and join a community of likeminded freaks.” Second Skin is
