2025 Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize
Members’ Choice Award
This Year’s Theme
Artists are invited to create a painting reflecting their interpretation or personal experience of Newcastle and the Hunter. This theme encourages a wide range of expressions, honoring our legacy of supporting local artwork.
Members are able to vote for your preferred artwork to receive the Members Choice Award.
Voting is now open and will close 10am Friday 31st October. Voting is only open to Newcastle Club Members. Only one vote per Member is permitted
How to Vote
Click on button on the bottom right of the page of your preferred artwork. This will take you directly to the Club's website to submit your vote
How to Bid
Each piece has a set reserve. If you wish to bid on an artwork, click the RESERVE BID link and this will direct you to the webpage for bidding. The webpage is continually updated and you will be notified in the event you are outbid.
Please note - the 2025 winning artwork will become property of the Newcastle Club and will not be available for purchase.
The 2025 Winner of the Members’ Choice Award will be announced at the award lunch, Friday 31st October at the Newcastle Club
Regent Street
Bianca Vern-Barnett
81CM X 92CM
OIL, ACRYLIC, CHARCOAL, OIL STICK AND OIL PASTEL ON CANVAS
1150 RESERVE - BID
The title of this work is ‘Regent St. Regent Street is in Maitland and the work is about our lives living in our little cottage on Regent St.
We got married in that house and it was the house we brought our babies home to. The painting show an abstracted middle, encapsulated by a border, symbolic of the cosy, protected nest I made there
The motifs reference clothes and fabrics from that time,and elements of the house and garden, as well as my thoughts and feeling as I remembered that time and place
Bianca Vern-Barnett is an abstract artist based in Maitland, NSW and is a graduate of COFA. A finalist in the Hornsby Art Prize, The Newcastle Club Foundation Prize and the National Emerging Art Prize, in 2024 she won the Hunter Emerging Art Prize for Painting. Bianca is represented by Straitjacket.
2025 Members Choice Award
Regent Street
Bianca Vern-Barnett
Neighbourhood
Estelle Leishman
70CM X 100CM
WATERCOLOUR FORAGED MINERAL PAINT
7000 RESERVE - BID
"Neighbourhood" is a reflection of my forager-artist practice in Newcastle, NSW, exploring the ecological and emotional landscape of my suburban environment Created using hand-foraged yellow ochre pigment sourced from a local park, the work brings together both native and introduced species Mynah birds, Lantana, Dandelion, Golden Wattle, and Ironbark blossoms those often-overlooked presences that accompany me on my foraging walks.
These species are arranged in a composition influenced by the symmetry and motifs found in Newcastle’s built environment, including the Civic Theatre, the Ocean Baths, and the decorative stained glass of suburban homes. This interplay of natural and architectural forms mirrors Newcastle’s layered identity as a post-colonial port city where imported and endemic species, cultures, and stories now coexist
In highlighting the everyday flora and fauna that surround us, Neighbourhood speaks to quiet forms of belonging, shared recognition, and connection to place
These familiar forms mark home, anchoring a collective sense of living together in a landscape that is both natural and shaped
2025 Members Choice Award
Neighbourhood
Estelle Leishman
ANATOMY OF A CHAIR
Jono Everett
110CM X 32CM X 50CM
TIMBER
3240 RESERVE - BID
Anatomy of a Chair exists at the intersection of craft, materiality and structure, elevating what is wild, weathered and forgotten into something finely crafted and considered Beauty, memory and drama The piece is constructed entirely from reclaimed wooden chairs, salvaged from the Newcastle street roadsides, objects discarded and no longer considered valuable. Discarded chairs are simply that
They are however, each one, imbued with a personal history, a past life of function, design, meaning and memory Once ubiquitous wooden furniture was in every Hunter home, lasting through generations. Their dark-stained timber, reminiscent of English walnut, echoes a longing for 'home' Inherited aesthetic speaks to colonial ties, to European roots and to a bygone domesticity that now feels contradictorily comforting and remote.
Every Hunter resident can relate to the instantly reconsiable forms, triggering feelings of nostalga, longing and loss. With over 30 years as a designer and fine furniture maker working predominantly with timber, this work marks an extension of my practice through an exploration of assemblage, sculptural form and surface treatment through patina, ink, dye, gouache, and ebonising techniques
2025 Members Choice Award
Anatomy of a Chair
Jono Everett
Time is the answer to everything Julia Flanagan
82CM X 82CM
ACRYLIC AND FLASHE ON BOARD
5200 RESERVE - BID
My works are riffs and playful thinking responding to a complicated world, filled with confusion, conflict and often sadness
Painting gives me a pause from the daily barrage of bad news. In using a multitude of colours and familiar geometric shapes in combination with meandering looping forms , I escape into a calm place and am absorbed in a simple uncomplicated practice of making , that provides moments to process deeper thoughts on the complexity of daily life In this painting , I’m contemplating ideas of contentment, joy and happiness; overwhelming feelings that arise when I find myself back beside Lake Macquarie, listening to birdsong and gazing out from my parents back windows to to treetops.
Although not referencing the tangible physical world , my work , inquisitively, reflects on how humans feel and how colours, shapes, patterns and forms can be uplifting, ruminative and harmonious
2025 Members Choice Award
Time is the answer to everything
Julia Flanagan
Quiet Ho Lindy Greedy
Walking in my local national park is my meditative ritual
35CM X 28CM
OIL ON LINEN
1000 RESERVE - BID
A glimpse of the ocean horizon always calms me I seek it out each time I walk
This painting is one of a small series acknowledging the reassuring gift of nature, and particularly for me, the ocean horizon
2025 Members Choice Award
Quiet Horizon I
Lindy Greedy
'Girls by the Waterhole II (Moonan Brook)
Louise Faulkner
35 5CM X 25 5CM
FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT ON COTTON RAG
520 RESERVE - BID
In this contemporary tableau captured at Moonan Brook in the Upper Hunter, young women relax in the water
A moment of stillness in a textured landscape alive with movement. Contemplative and calm, they are perfectly, naturally posed
We are drawn here each year by the area’s natural beauty The blue-grey banks of Moonan Brook sparkle silver in sunlight, burnished smooth by time and Barrington mountain water.
A primeval place, loud with life yet eliciting a quiet beauty An enthralling juxtaposition
2025 Members Choice Award
'Girls by the Waterhole II (Moonan Brook)
Louise Faulkner
A New Home
Mel Hickey
30CM X 42CM
COLLAGE WITH CARDBOARD
120 RESERVE - BID
This work reimagines the vast expanse of sea and sky as seen from the vantage point of Nobby's Lighthouse.
Through collage and abstraction, the familiar horizon fractures into shifting planes of colour, texture and form.
Resisting the literal representation, instead evoking the sensations of distance, depth and restless movement of water against land
My practice explores themes of identity, home and searching for a sense of belongingboth within myself and the area around me
2025 Members Choice Award
Early morning views towards the Hunter River
Julie Purdie
Mornings With Bow
Michèle Heibel
37CM X 29CM
ETCHING NEEDLE ON CLAYBOARD BLACK
650 RESERVE - BID
When I had my residency up at the Nobbys Lighthouse Arts Cottages-Whibayganba it was always a little dog named Bow (sibling of Arrow) who would be the first to greet me as I arrived His owner Greg a constant with his large Coffee cup, my friend Pete already back from his morning surf (he insists that’s him down there by the water) I will always treasure the simple beauty of these memories
Growing up in an artistic Swiss family, Michèle Heibel attained a Diploma of Graphic Design at North Sydney's Billy Blue College in 1990 She found herself working in the publishing industry for the following two decades In 2009, after the birth of her son, she felt a deep need for change She found that moving to New South Wales' Hunter Valley returned her to the rural lifestyle she had known as a child and credits this environment with finding her way back to creating artworks by hand Present day, Michèle is a well-established artist.
‘My miniatures are created on Clayboard Black using only a needle or pin These are usually stolen from my mother's sewing table and screwed into an old metal etching handle that once belonged to my late Swiss Grandfather, a Graphic Designer by trade
2025 Members Choice Award
Mornings With Bow
Michèle Heibel
Winter Chillin'
Penelope Green
70CM X 46.7CM
OIL AND PIGMENT ON BOARD
2100 RESERVE - BID
The architectural beauty of the iconic Newcastle Ocean Baths is fabled and a magnet for swimmers and photographers, particularly in summer
In winter, there is less flesh to be seen but golden hour still provides the perfect light for some candid and very laid back portraits between friends
Penelope Green is a journalist, photographer and author inspired by ocean and street life daily in Newcastle. A member of the Bar Beach Seahorses and Women of the Hunter in Photography (WH!P) Collective, she's also a finalist in the Galah Regional Photographic Prize (2025), Head On Portrait finalist (2024) and City Of Sydney Australian Life (2022)
2025 Members Choice Award
Winter Chillin'
Penelope Green
Rocking the Suburbs
Sia Cox
31CM X 38 5CM OIL ON BOARD
540 RESERVE - BID
Birds on plinths of time is concerned with the western traditional concepts of Natural History illustrations of our past from circa 1500 and giving them a recalled place in history
This work in particular holds a 19th-century ornithology study of a bird.
By placing this bird on a plinth the aim is to represent the past, of the documentation of our native world and placing it on a pedestal, shelf or in this case a plinth to remember them by Birds are disappearing from our environment at a great rate and my hope is to bring an awareness of this by placing the ancient study on a plinth, allowing the viewer to see how unique our birds and documented past is!
2025 Members Choice Award
Rocking the Suburbs
Sia Cox
Cornucopia at Honeysuckle
Vera Zulumovski
109CM X 80CM LINOCUT
2500 RESERVE - BID
This work is a meditation on the intersection of nature, memory, and industry elements that shape Newcastle’s identity and layered history.
The central motif a cornucopia-like vessel overflowing with shells and organic forms symbolises abundance, transformation, and the natural richness of the coastal environment. The composition is anchored in the familiar waterfront setting of Honeysuckle, a site of urban renewal that still holds the echoes of the city’s industrial past. A mid-century vase in the foreground introduces a quiet autobiographical element, it marks the time my family arrived in Newcastle; the bowl of figs reflects how we’ve since taken root and thrived
In the background, across the harbour, the silhouette of Newcastle’s working port and industrial structures looms. This juxtaposition delicate organic forms in the foreground set against the hard geometry of industry and a working port reflects the tension and harmony between Newcastle’s natural beauty and its industrial legacy
The act of carving the linoleum became a process of layering and excavation, echoing the uncovering of stories embedded within the landscape. Through this work, I aim to honour both the fragility and resilience of Newcastle its environment, its past, and its ongoing evolution
2025 Members Choice Award
Cornucopia at Honeysuckle
Vera Zulumovski