Sorrento Art Prize Catalogue

28 June - 31 August 2025

Sorrento Art Prize 2025.

There is something undeniably powerful about being seen. For artists, that moment of recognition—when a work finds its way into the world and is shared—is often the beginning of something far greater than the creation of the work itself. It is an invitation to connect, to question, to feel.

The Sorrento Art Prize was born from a desire to honour that moment. As an artist myself, I know what it means to struggle for time, space, and financial freedom to make work that matters.

At $125,000 the Sorrento Art Prize is not only the richest art prize in Australia, it is an opportunity to for an artist to have a potentially life changing experience, to take the financial pressure off to create work.

But this prize is not just about the money. It’s about elevating voices.

It’s about recognising that artists are the culture-makers, the ones reflecting the spirit of our time and reshaping how we see the world.

The Sorrento Art Prize presents a national snapshot of contemporary Australian art—bold, brave, and beautifully diverse.

This year, we received over 1,1000 entries from artists working across disciplines and geographies—from city studios to regional towns and remote communities. Every application was seen, read, and considered. The selection process was rigorous, personal, and, at times, emotionally intense.

So how were the sixty finalists chosen?

I wasn’t looking for names, networks or résumés. I was looking for a spark: innovation, material intelligence, and above all, a unique voice. I asked myself—does the work make me feel something? Does it tell a story, or hold space for one? I shortlisted instinctively, but with care—reviewing, returning, questioning. When I reached 100 strong contenders, I took time to step back and reflect deeply—away from the screen, down at the Sorrento Back Beach as the crowds cleared and the tide rolled in. It was there, thinking about each work and the

emotional response it provoked—hope, surprise, nostalgia, sadness, joy—that the final exhibition began to take shape.

There were no quotas or checklists. Just art. Pure, courageous, deeply human.

The 60 shortlisted artists represent an extraordinary range of disciplines—painting, sculpture, photography, installation, sound, video, textile, and hybrid forms. Some are widely celebrated; others are showing their work nationally for the first time. What unites them is authenticity. They are the storytellers. The ones who hold a mirror to our lives and ask us to look closer.

And they do so here, in Sorrento—a coastal village best known for its summer tourism, now being reimagined as a year-round destination for culture, creativity, and thought. Through the Prize, we also aim to energise our local economy, inspire the next generation, and create meaningful connections between artists and audiences.

My heartfelt thanks to our esteemed judge, Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA, for bringing decades of wisdom and critical insight to this year’s judging. And to the artists: thank you for trusting us with your work.

We are deeply honoured to hold space for your vision. Art has the power to change lives. This prize is our way of saying: We see you.

We believe in what you do. And we want the world to see it too.

And while you can read about the works or view them online, the best way to experience this exhibition is to visit in person. Come to Sorrento. Stand in front of these works. Let them speak to you. There is nothing like the energy of art in real space—where light shifts, scale surprises, and the human presence of the artist lingers in the room.

Julie Collins Founder, Sorrento Art Prize Director & Gallery Australia www.andgalleryaustralia.net

From the Judge 2025 Sorrento Art Prize.

Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA Australian National University There are approximately 75 major art prizes operating in Australia today – as far as I am aware – this is the largest per capita concentration of art prizes anywhere in the world and may comment on our national preoccupation with competition in many facets of our lives. The Sorrento Art Prize is one of the newest, it is the richest art prize in the country, and arguably the best of the new prizes.

The selection of a winner from such a strong field is a bit of a roll of the dice as I quickly convinced myself that that any of a dozen or even score of the finalists could be declared as a perfectly reputable winner. I recall, many years ago, when Bea Maddock and I were joint judges of Tasmania’s major art prize. She turned to me and memorably said, with a wink in her eye, ‘You know Sasha, it all depends on the judge on the day and when some disgruntled finalist complains that they have not been awarded the prize, simply say that it was the other judge’s fault and I will do the same’. Oh Bea – where are you now, in my hour of need?

To be selected as one of the fifty-nine finalists means that you are already a winner and on this you need to be congratulated. Do you realise that it is more difficult to be a finalist in the Sorrento Art Prize than to be a finalist in the Archibald Prize? The numerical competition is stiffer for the Sorrento Art Prize and the prize purse is considerably bigger. The Archibald Prize this year received 904 entrees of who 57 were shortlisted for the $100k prize, the Sorrento Art Prize attracted over 1100 entrees of whom 59 were shortlisted for the $125k prize.

I have often wondered how arbitrary and subjective is the judging process. Many years ago, I was one of two pre-selection judges for the major art prize in Canberra. We had about 400 artworks physically delivered to the huge Albert Hall and my job, and that of the other preselection judge, was to select the forty finalists

from which the interstate judge would pick the winner. The other preselection judge was Udo Sellbach, a man about thirty years my senior, trained in Cologne, Germany and was a prominent painter and printmaker and the director of the Canberra School of Art. Udo came around in the morning, made his list, plus a reserve list of five possible candidates. I came in the afternoon and independently selected my forty finalists plus the reserve list. I was amazed to discover that despite our different backgrounds our lists corresponded almost perfectly. You can all this visual literacy or simply indoctrination – we may have differing personal tastes, but all who have a degree of visual literacy, know what is a good and professional artwork and what is not.

In this exhibition, there are no duds, ‘may bes’ or ‘tryhards’. These are all professional artworks – and some works of a very high order. I approached all of the finalists with an open mind and to the best of my abilities judged each work on its merit and not on an artist’s standing. I examined each work for some time. Even very good artists occasionally make a less successful work and emerging artists, on occasion, produce exceptional pieces. I know that at least one artist will agree with my choice and over fifty others will feel that I could have done better.

Forgive me – I did my best.

Congratulations to all of the finalists and winner of this competition.

Highly Commended, in art competition this is simply code for saying, these could have easily won, if there had been more prizes.

Danny Moynihan, Empathy for the Thylacine, a culmination in the artist’s long obsession with this animal and play with shadows and a brilliant still life.

Christine Healy, Baby, it’s a magic moment now – one of the most elegant, beautiful and clever paintings in this exhibition.

Stewart MacFarlane, For Better or For Worse, raw, direct and with a not so subtle touch of the eerie Yvonne Boag, Incidental bruises and shadows – a curiously haunting work that grows on you the more time you spend with it.

Michael Le Grand, The Alchemist, an elegant and highly refined table top sculpture, that grows in complexity the more time that you spend to explore it.

Lisa Roet, Golden Monkey, the Sneezing Snub Nosed Monkey – a superb achievement on a considerable scale.

Winner: Gareth Sansom’s I’ll go anywhere. It is a brilliant, complex, multi-tiered mixed media painting that is witty, quirky and exceptionally memorable. Its first-glance simplicity opens up to a labyrinth complexity as you start to explore the work. It has the rare quality of possessing both the immediate Andy Warhol ‘ wow’ factor and the show burn that opens up different levels of meaning as you enter the painting.

Sasha Grishin Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA Australian National University

Sales: Julie Collins - Director gallery@djprojects.net 0417324 795 Free delivery and Installation within Victoria Shipping arranged interstate and Overseas.

21 Morce Ave Sorrento, Victoria, Australia www.andgalleryaustralia.net & Gallery is part of the djprojects family of art related businesses. www.djprojects.net

A Thank You to Our Sponsors The Sorrento Art Prize would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors and partners.

Your belief in the power of art to transform lives and communities has helped us establish SAP as more than just an award—it’s a national platform for contemporary Australian art, and a catalyst for cultural and economic growth here in Sorrento.

Whether through financial support, in-kind contributions, or passionate advocacy, you’ve played a vital role in bringing this prize to life—and we thank you deeply.

It is easy for us to rattle off a list of sponsors names in thanks, but what we want is for everyone to start rewarding those who support the arts… use you purchasing power…ask yourself.. does this person or company support the arts.. if so then support them.

Remember these logos and these people, they are making a difference and making things possible.

Will the Sorrento Art Prize happen again? This has been a question I have been asked since the opening. The answer is yes, but only with the support of a major supporter, basically We need someone to cover the main award in 2026.

This is a rare opportunity to be visibly aligned with one of Australia’s most significant and high-impact cultural prizes.

Sponsoring the main award sends a strong message: that you support artists, innovation, and the future of Australian culture.

With your help, we can continue to offer life-changing support to Australian artists and cement Sorrento’s place on the national arts map.

If you would like to discuss a tax deductible donation please contact us. Let’s create something extraordinary—together.

With heartfelt thanks, Julie Collins & Derek John

David & Myf Kegele

Ben Everist 0402 250 457

CONNECTION

Putting you in touch with wine

Adriane Strampp Temporal Space (and the weight of silence) Oil on linen 162 x 203cm $ 20,000

Artist Statement My work engages with the perceptual experience of presence and absence, and the nuanced ways in which human presence can be profoundly felt, even when not directly visible. Postpandemic my attention has shifted to the interior as a domestic landscape, both changing and constant, positioning light as the storyteller that simultaneously reveals and obscures, often transforming the mundane into the extraordinary. As the philosopher and phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty observed, “painting does not imitate the visible; it renders visible”.

Through the exploration of light and shadow, I seek to reveal how the act of seeing brings forth a world that exists in the tension between what is both seen and unseen, known and unknowable.

About Influenced by Gaston Bachelard and Patti Smith, Adriane Strampp is a romantic and figurative painter known for evocative, poetic imagery that transcends subject. Working in series over extended periods, Strampp uses a central form—once horses, later dresses, and more recently interiors—as a vessel to explore memory, absence, and emotional resonance. Her layered, reductive painting process invites reflection on what is seen and what is felt, often blurring the line between presence and absence.

Strampp’s practice reflects a deep engagement with material, surface, and scale, aiming to communicate before being consciously understood. Her early works were shaped by German Neo-Expressionism and John Walker’s influence during his time in Melbourne. More recently, long lockdowns turned her focus inward to interior spaces and personal histories.

A Master of Fine Arts graduate from Monash University, Strampp has exhibited widely across Australia and internationally and is represented in major institutional and private collections.

Alice Pulvers ‘Transcendence’ Framed Oil on Linen 120x120cm $12,000

Artist Statement Lucy sits calmly on a park bench, looking out to sea. What surrounds her is a world not quite like our own. With the quiet smile on her face, we transcend through her thoughts into a rich, textured, intoxicating world. It is saturated with colour and filled with blooms, larger than life. Life is abundant and vibrant.

Horses stand quietly within the four walls of this world. They observe their surroundings with quiet contemplation. We stand with them and observe a world where time stands still and plants grow vigorously. Colour consumes all. Observing Lucy and the elements that surround her, we are also conscious of our own space and time.

About Alice was born in Tokyo, Japan and grew up in both Tokyo and Kyoto with her two younger sisters, also artists, and her older brother. She was educated in Japanese schools until she moved to Sydney in 2000 and is bilingual and bicultural in Japanese and English. Alice began drawing and painting from an early age.

When Alice was 15, she travelled to Paris, and the art she saw there made a strong and lasting impression on her. This experience and her other travels have influenced her development as an artist. Alice has studied life-drawing and has taken courses at the Julian Ashton Art School and at College of Fine Art in Sydney.

Alice exhibits her paintings regularly and has been a finalist in numerous art prizes including the Portia Geach Art Prize, the Mosman Art Prize, the Kilgour Prize, the Ravenswood Art Prize and the National Capital Art Prize.

Alun Rhys Jones FLUX Charcoal on Stone Henge Paper- framed 150 x150cm $16,000

Artist Statement “My practice investigates identity, media, and contemporary culture in an increasingly digitized and consumer driven society.

About Alun Rhys Jones graduated with Honours from the National Art School, Sydney in 2011. Since then, his work has been exhibited widely across Australia and internationally. He has presented twelve solo exhibitions and participated in over 30 group shows.

Notable exhibitions include NARCISSUS at Grafton Regional Gallery, ETERNAL at Wangaratta Art Gallery, Gaze of Our Lives at Lismore Regional Gallery, and The Other Art Fair in London.

His practice explores identity, representation, and the visual language of contemporary culture.

Jones has been shortlisted for more than 40 awards, including the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Paul Guest Prize, Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, Rick Amor Drawing Prize, and Hazlehurst Art on Paper Award. He received a Highly Commended in the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award and was selected for the Emporio Armani Commission. Jones currently lives and works in Sydney, continuing to produce work that challenges perceptions of celebrity, masculinity, and image.

Bill Perrin Obelisk Cast Bronze 135x39x39cm $20,000

Artist Statement ‘Obelisk’ was inspired by the impact of forces of nature on the world around me as well as industrial processes and their effects on our environment. Casting in bronze is usually an exacting process whereby a sculpture is made in one material and then transferred exactly into bronze, often with thumbprint detail.

I chose to work more directly in molten metal for this piece, whereby the hand of the artist is less evident. I treat bronze as if it is molten lava flowing and seeping into crevices until it solidifies. Negative spaces were created with a timber mould.

The bronze was poured directly onto the timber leaving the metal free to find its own path, at the same time reacting in a volatile manner with the combustible timber.

My final work ‘Obelisk’ could resemble ancient ruins where all that is left is the skeletal remains of something once extraordinary or majestic.

About Bill Perrin studied Fine Art Sculpture at RMIT from 1975 to 1978.

In 1979, Bill began his career in education as a Technical Officer in Sculpture at Prahran CAE, advancing to Senior Tutor after the institution merged to form Victoria University. In 1992, he became a Lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts, where he worked until 2007. Bill assisted in the development of the Foundry facilities at both Prahran and VCA. Casting in bronze and iron became central to his sculptural practice. Moulds were taken from found objects and then reassembled to create new forms inspired by architectural and industrial themes. Bill also developed experimental ways of working in cast bronze and iron by working solely with negative spaces rather than wax positives. The result was not always predictable but often determined by the parameters of the process. The NGV has ‘Fireworks’ (bronze) 1988 in its collection.

Brad Gunn Flopsy Centrefold Resin & Synthetic Fibres 105x44x41cm $14,000

Artist Statement Flopsy Centrefold is from a series of works titled ‘Fuzzles’ which explores contemporary adult themes using surrealist characters.

The figure was based on the Burt Reynolds Cosmopolitan centrefold in 1972 and discusses the fuzzy politics of sexuality in the present day. The piece is inspired by an iconic moment in popular culture and emits a presence by distorting public perceptions of intimacy, gender and love.

From a time when sex was hidden away to the sexual liberation of the 1960s and the current era of hypervisibility and inclusivity its relaxed frame draped in luscious fur serves to combat discussion by embracing its otherness, bringing sexuality back to a raw form.

About Brad Gunn is a sculptor working in a range of contemporary materials and techniques. Balancing a professional sculpture and fabrication business with his own personal practice he has worked for an array of private and commercial clients. His studio practice is often figurative and explores intimate psychologies and social structures through an ever shifting cultural landscape.

The pieces can take on the form of detailed surreal characters or simpler abstract forms. Most work is made using moulding and casting techniques learned over 20 years of experience and are made using resins and gypsums cements. Each piece is hand sculpted in oil clay for weeks or months before the moulding process begins. Brad completed a Bachelors Degree at the Victorian College of Arts and has since exhibited in solo and group show both in Australia and overseas establishing himself as an artist and maker in Melbourne

Cameron Hayes Combined Funeral and Garage Sale Oil on Linen 243x198cm $45,000 Cameron is exhibiting courtesy of Australian Galleries

Artist Statement The only time people are interested in your biography is at your funeral and when you have a garage sale. A funeral is your life in other people’s opinions and a garage sale is your life in junk. Unlike at your funeral, when you have a garage the value of your life is tested by the objectivity of the market. Shoppers find it easier to understand not who you are but who you want people to think who you are by way of the objects you buy, keep and show to them.

When wearing a T-shirt does for a set of principals and moral behaviour, when rattling tins and going to charity auctions does for a conscience, when fake is preferred over real, when performance is valued over sincerity and when showing replaces knowing then we will combine funerals with garage sales .

About Cameron Hayes was born in 1969 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia but lived most of his life in Melbourne . Cameron completed his secondary education at St.Kevins College Toorak 1980 – 87 and achieved a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts), RMIT, Melbourne, 1992 . In 2004 and 2005 Cameron lived and worked on the Tiwi Islands in the community of Milikapti. Between 2005 – 2011 Cameron worked in the Blender street art studios.

Cameron is represented in Australia by Australian Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney, and outside Australia by Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York

Carolyn Cardinet Impeded Vision Polycarbonate & Wire 250x120x120cm $7,500

Artist Statement The shimmering large anamorphic column soars from its mirrored base to reflect natural light from all angles creating a single ethereal transparent mosaic sculpture from hundreds of found and reuses of clear optical lenses joined together with discarded champagne cage wire. The environmental impact of plastic waste is significant. Eyeglass lenses are typically made from plastic materials such as polycarbonate. While these materials provide necessary durability and optical clarity, we are blind to their environmental impact. Each discarded lens and each discarded wire in this ascending piece represent the lost opportunities for recycling and reuse even single-use. The cumulative effect of these missed opportunities is a growing burden on our planet. By highlighting this issue through my art lens, I hope to raise awareness about the environmental footprint of plastic and to inspire less consumerism.

About French-born, Melbourne-based artist Carolyn Cardinet is a leading figure in sustainable art, known for transforming discarded plastics into poignant sculptural installations. With a Master of Fine Art from RMIT and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts, her work explores the intersection of environmental activism and contemporary art. Cardinet’s practice reclaims mass-produced waste—such as bottle caps, fishing lines, and beach debris—crafting monochromatic forms that highlight the environmental impact of consumerism. Her installations have been showcased at events like Melbourne Design Week and the Ocean Lovers Festival, and she has completed over 16 international residencies. An advocate for community engagement, Cardinet conducts workshops and collaborates with diverse groups to raise awareness about plastic pollution. Her art challenges audiences to reconsider waste and sustainability, making her a prominent voice in the eco-art movement.

Carmel Wallace Medicine Cope Aluminium prescription pill-packs, glass beads, threads 150x200x35cm $14,500

Artist Statement Medicine Cope was created over an extended period of time with blister packs accumulated from prescriptions the artist relies upon for physical survival. Slowly these were handstitched together during pandemic times until a garment, a cope signifying both bodily and spiritual healing appeared. The artist’s home country is rich in native vegetation and wildlife.

Seeking solace, she often walks along tracks winding through her local Cobboboonee Forest to the edge of the Southern Ocean experiencing the healing effects offered by these natural environments. Medicine Cope was conceived with this reference in mind too, extending reflections on health and fragility to habitat and the increasing vulnerability of the natural world in the face of exploitation and climate change. Now the disturbing escalation of persecution and violence [in Australia and internationally] makes a healing Medicine Cope all the more poignant for our times.

About Carmel Wallace is a multidisciplinary artist based in southwest Victoria on Gunditjmara Country. Her practice—spanning sculpture, installation, and printmaking—explores the intersection of place, environmental ethics, and material storytelling. Wallace often incorporates found and recycled materials, transforming coastal debris and forest remnants into works that reflect ecological narratives and human impact.

She earned a PhD from Deakin University in 1999, focusing on art’s role in fostering environmental awareness. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Germany, the Lorne Sculpture Biennale, and the Warrnambool Art Gallery. Notable public artworks include Seat for Vida overlooking Portland Harbour and a collaborative stone sculpture at Kurtonitj with Vicki Couzens. Wallace is a recipient of the 2019 & 2024 Yering Station Sculpture Award. Through her art, she invites audiences to engage deeply with the natural world and consider their relationship to it.

Charles Rocco Human Race Version 2 Video MP4 20 mintues $120,000 (single copy) This work can also be licenced for partial use, please discuss details with gallery.

This project is made possible by

Artist Statement A Human Race explores the fragile state of a 21st century civilisation less than adequately undertaking its responsibilities as a global guardian, competently and compassionately overseeing the welfare of this planet and all its inhabitants.

Inspired by 1. the Allegory of Plato’s Cave: We live in caves judging the world by shadows cast on the walls from the light outside - 2. German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s proposition that our world is ‘the best of all possible worlds’ - 3.

Voltaire’s satirical refutation of Leibniz’s belief is seen through the actions of Pangloss in Candide - 4. ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’, the intro to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, which suggests a world of radical opposites existing contemporaneously - 5. Bernard Malamud’s quote from his 1963 novel Dubin’s Lives: ‘If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station’.

About Charles Rocco is an American-born, Australian-based artist renowned for his ethereal wire mesh sculptures that explore the interplay of light, space, and form. Born in New York in 1950, Rocco relocated to Australia, where he has developed a multidisciplinary practice encompassing sculpture, printmaking, photography, video, illustration, and 3D printing.

His signature works—delicate, translucent forms crafted from galvanized welded mesh—are designed to subtly occupy their environment, responding to shifting light and shadow.

Rocco’s public installations are featured in prominent locations across Australia, including the National Museum in Canberra, Melbourne Aquarium, Glen Eira Arts Centre, and Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Eltham. His 2002 altarpiece, Resurrection of Christ, combines wire mesh, river stones, and copper to evoke spiritual transcendence. An educator and arts administrator, Rocco has held leadership roles in TAFE and public education, and was Deputy Director of the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery.

Highly Commended Christine Healy Baby, its a a magic moment now Oil on Linen 122x152cm $12,500 Christine is exhibiting courtesy of Kallie Rolfe Contemporary Art

Artist Statement We are all caught in the rhythm of something bigger - the mysteries of the infinite woven into the spark between us. Now is all there is: reframed, reimagined, remixed. The painting title is from the song Magic by Sia, as featured on the soundtrack of the Disney movie “A Wrinkle in Time”. The film is adapted from the beloved sci-fi novel “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle (first published in 1962). As a teenager I was a fan of this classic story, in particular its concept of wrinkles in time creating bridges between different points in space and time. Theories in contemporary physics, such as wormholes, suggest that such short cuts through space time could actually exist. In this work I have combined colours and shapes, some recognisable and others abstract, to create space-time bridges evoking a sense of mystery in the present moment.

About Christine Healy, born in 1955 in Robinvale Victoria, is an Australian artist celebrated for her evocative abstract paintings.

Initially pursuing a career in medicine, she practiced as a doctor before fully dedicating herself to the arts in late 2011. She is known for experimental, intuitive work focusing on the tactile interplay of matter, pigmentation, and the visual dynamics of light. Healy’s commitment to her craft has led to numerous solo exhibitions including notable shows at GAGPROJECTS in Adelaide in 2023 and Fehily Contemporary in 2014 and 2012. Her work has been featured an various group exhibitions and Art Fairs including Quarantine Art Fair 2025 (Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art), the Paul Guest Drawing Prize in 2022, and the “I Am Here” exhibition curated by Katherine Hattam at Arthouse Gallery, Sydney, in 2021. In 2018, Healy was awarded the People’s Choice Award, Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, held at Bayside Gallery, Melbourne.

Christopher Langton Polypteaz Biopolymer, epoxy resin, glass fibre, and acrylic paint 248 x 193x186 cm $35,000 Christopher is exhibiting courtesy of Tolarno Galleries

Artist Statement If your doctor finds a polyp, they may recommend a biopsy, but what if we are dealing with a novel disorder? We find ourselves in a rapidly evolving viral condition born from the collision of human ambition and technological proliferation. It begins as an infection of curiosity. But as the virus spreads, it reprograms the mind, triggering compulsive adoption of new technologies while amplifying deep-seated anxieties about obsolescence and loss.

Infected individuals experience cognitive dissonance: a mix of fascination with progress and fear of being left behind. The disease causes societal fragmentation, dividing those who integrate seamlessly with this new world from those who cannot adapt. Symptoms worsen over time, manifesting as emotional instability, a sense of disconnection, and existential dread. It spreads uncontrollably, its mutations outpacing the ability to understand or contain it.

About Christopher Langton is a Melbourne-based sculptor, painter, and installation artist. He explores pop culture, science fiction, and the intersection of biology and technology through his innovative use of materials. His work blends vivid aesthetics with unsettling undertones, often featuring oversized sculptures and inflatables which invoke a nuanced reaction of delight mingled with dread. Langton’s creative process involves custom-built machinery, and his large-scale installations create immersive environments. His work has been showcased internationally, with pieces in collections such as The National Gallery of Victoria, Monash University, and The National Gallery of Australia. His art also engages with environmental and technological concerns.

Clare Brodie Elusive Forms 12 Acrylic on Canvas 138x198 cm $14,000 Clare is exhibiting courtesy of Gallerysmith

Artist Statement Elusive Forms series is drawn from my local bush, Guringai country where I walk daily. This mediative time allows for deep personal connection, the deciphering of the present. Immersed in nature, I metaphorically simplify the complexities of the bush and the nature of life. The title is taken from a 1991 Ellsworth Kelly quote (‘Ellsworth Kelly’, Tricia Y Payk, page 115). “…we see many different kinds of shapes… In reality they’re all elusive forms. …I am not inventing; my ideas come from constantly investigating how things look.” Through observation and repetition I methodically make heroic shapes from the elusive.

This gives me certainty in my environment, an anchor amidst the flux of these uncertain times in which I dwell.

About Clare Brodie’s paintings have a calming beauty with quiet strength. Brodie fuses her emotional internal landscape with nature, deciphering complexities into deceptively simple compositions with a uniform finish that belies all effort and process. As a colour block painter Brodie follows her credio colour is precious by using high-intensity saturated colours within a neutral palette. Working in conceptual series, Brodie explores and discovers a unique visual language for each series. Her work is continually evolving and reflecting her current state of being. Sydney based, Brodie has been represented by galleries in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Her collectors extend to Asia and England. Brodie has been a multiple finalist in the Mosman, Raw and Waverley art prizes.

Dagmar Cyrulla Grateful Oil on Linen 91x122cm $16,000

Artist Statement I created this painting to represent my gratefulness and vulnerability. This sense of vulnerability was an issue for me during the Covid lockdown. I was not being able to visit my father in ICU. I had to work on shifting my attitude, so I made a conscious effort to ‘be present’. I did this by reflecting each morning on what I was grateful for. That was all I could control, and it helped me push the sense of vulnerability aside each day. I was grateful for my relationship and the experiences and memories that have made me who I am. The way in which I captured the feeling of vulnerability was through presenting the figures naked, but with underpants. Not sexualised but intimate.

The bedroom represents intimacy for me. The photo on the bedside table is obscured to represent my accumulation of memories that have led me to this point.

About Dagmar Cyrulla is a Melbourne-based artist known for her emotive paintings and sculptures that explore the complexities of human relationships. A multiple Archibald and Moran Prize finalist, her work delves into contemporary narratives, encouraging reflection on what it means to be human in an ever-changing world. “My paintings are about what it is like to be human,” she says. “They’re interpretations of experiences, choices, and fleeting moments—snapshots of real life.”

Cyrulla’s work is deeply personal yet universal, touching on themes such as family dynamics, power, role models, and emotional connection. With a strong sense of optimism, she invites viewers to engage emotionally and intellectually, offering space for self-reflection. Her aim is to provoke thought, empathy, and conversation through the lens of lived experience.

Cyrulla has held numerous solo and group exhibitions, received national and international residencies and grants, and her works are held in major public and private collections across Australia

Highly Commended Daniel Moynihan Empathy For the Thylacine Oil on Linen 200x250cm $47,500 Daniel is exhibiting courtesy of Australian Galleries

Artist Statement Konrad Lorenz, the Nobel Laureate, once suggested: “if you want to really study an animal, you must first love it”.

With me, it’s always the images that matter. They do not arise from the ferment of an obsessive or fixated mindset but, given their long history, one can justifiably surmise that the theme of the Tasmanian Tiger betrays my own extended and private personalization of the image.

My theme has been seriously misunderstood and its use has often been bracketed by ethnographic or museological appreciations – as though I simply become fascinated by the documented and recalled memory of an extinct species. However, there exists a crucial distinction: my artworks are about something rather than of something – in other words, they have an inherent content rather than a mere subject.

About Daniel Moynihan (b. 1948, Melbourne) is a distinguished Australian artist celebrated for his evocative etchings, drawings, and paintings that delve into themes of identity, mythology, and the natural world. Educated at Preston Technical College and RMIT under the mentorship of Tate Adams and Udo Sellbach, Moynihan has been a pivotal figure in Australian printmaking since the late 1960s. His fascination with the Tasmanian Tiger has been a recurring motif, symbolizing broader narratives of extinction and cultural memory. Moynihan’s works are held in major institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, the British Museum, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

His 2016 retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, “The Art of Daniel Moynihan: Printmaking 1966–2016,” highlighted his five-decade contribution to the arts. Beyond his artistic practice, Moynihan has influenced generations through teaching roles at Prahran College, the Phillip Institute of Technology, and as Head of Printmaking at RMIT University.

Dave Sparkes The Sepia Island Watercolour on Paper, 90 x 70cm $1,850

Artist Statement I’ve always been attracted to islands, and the smaller they are, the more beautiful they seem to be; large islands are not that different to any other landmass, and thus lack the exquisite delicacy of small islands. This little boulder strewn beauty is only about the size of a tennis court; it almost presents as a diorama of an island.

I’d like to shrink myself down to that scale and sit on one of those boulders right now; it feels like an inviting place to be. I painted this in sepia to create a feeling of nostalgia, like a trippy old black and white photo pulled from the archives of an explorer. I also wanted to invoke a kind of separate, timeless reality, and monochrome imparts an unmistakeable detachment from the here and now, since we generally experience life in colour.

About Although he has painted since his early school years, Dave Sparkes was a professional surf photographer from 1993 until around 2015, contracted to Tracks magazine and Rip Curl. He has photographed covers for magazines worldwide, shooting assignments with the world’s best surfers.

He gradually transitioned back to painting around 2015, and since then has been painting in watercolour full time, holding solo exhibitions at Tweed Regional Gallery, Grafton Regional Gallery, Lone Goat Gallery, NRCG, M-Arts Precinct and others.

He was a finalist in the 2024 John Glover Prize, the 2024 Waverly Art prize, the Wollumbin Art Award, and the Heysen Award for Landscape (for the 2nd time). He won the 2024 Cassino Watercolour Prize. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jlR BbweUULYY4jHQT9FN5kdhq6zT61asOeZvIYc3hJ8/edit?gid=102 6859057#gid=1026859057

David Palliser Algae Oil on canvas, 163 x 153cm $17,000

Artist Statement The surprise for me in making this painting and probably any painting is that the troublesome and worrisome efforts to get the whole thing to work end up highlighting the parts that arrived by default and straightforward vagueness.

I tune in to colour and space in an attempt to bend these forms and gaps that feel like something into the properties of paint and dislocated space. I hope it all generates an experience of constantly falling apart and constructing itself and resonates with uncertain territories within oneself…the complexity of things becomes close.

About David Palliser is an artist based in Naarm,Melbourne ,Australia.

His work centres on painting and works on paper and also maintains a long standing commitment to improvised and experimental music. He has exhibited regularly since 1988 and performed music in various scenarios since 1981. His visual and aural practices deeply inform each other. Over the last decade, and continuing ,he travels to Europe regularly to perform with the dance group Playground Berlim and various other collaborations.

He was an integral part of The People with Chairs Up Their Noses and The Donkey’s Tail and continues to play extensively with The Charles Ives Singers and many other individuals and groups. His website contains a broad archive of his visual and music work

Faridah Cameron Cloud- rain- water Acrylic on linen, 168 x 168 $19,000

Artist Statement Walking on Seven Mile Beach in Tasmania. The colours of sea and sky are enigmatic: rain is coming. Here, I know something of the weather, the shells, the algae, the colours and textures of the earth itself. When I walked on the beach in Cornwall where some of my ancestors lived long ago I found the colours and textures of the place lovely but unfamiliar, foreign.

Just as water changes form in response to temperature, people are changed by the conditions that surround them. Slowly and subtly, place effects transformation. Puna – mungalina – layna.

These are the palawa kani (Tasmanian Indigenous language) words for cloud – rain – water. I cannot change history, but I can allow myself, like water, to adapt within the natural world, to become part of the fabric of the place that is my home.

About Faridah Cameron’s art has evolved from her experiences in many different cultural environments in Australia and overseas. In 1991, after completing her BA (Fine Art) in the Northern Territory, she cofounded visual theatre company Neil Cameron Productions.

As co-director and principal artist she oversaw the design and creation of stunning large-scale imagery for visual theatre events across Australia. She has taught in schools, universities and communities Australia-wide. In 2004 Faridah Cameron moved to Hobart and altered the focus of her work to full time studio practice. The principal theme of her work is the cultural translation of the physical existence; of our ideas of who we are and how we relate, societally, culturally and within the biosphere. The thread-like application of paint becomes a metaphor for connection, between past and present, between the arts of diverse cultures, and between traditional crafts and contemporary painting. Her work is held in private and public collections including Artbank, the Tasmanian Arts and Heritage Office and the Holmes à Court Collection.

Frank Duyker An Exceptional Dinner for Two Wood, 70 x 70 x 80cm $3,000

Artist Statement “An Exceptional Dinner for Two” is a full sized dining table, covered in gourmet dishes that feature rare and exotic animals.

The table, covering, crockery, cutlery and food will all be carved in wood. The dishes are: • Baby Koala head and Platypus bill served with asparagus and almonds • Kakapo head soup • Whole steamed Coelocanth stuffed with chopped Panda and bamboo shoots • Kiwi with mushrooms and baby carrots This work comments on how humans around the world are destroying nature and are continuing to wipe out many beautiful creatures. If patrons were willing to pay a high enough price and it wasn’t against the law to sell such exotic produce, then such a meal could occur.

About Frank Duyker is a sculptor, craftsman and designer. After graduating as an electronic engineer, he studied sculptural and furniture carving and then went on to obtain an Industrial Design degree; reasoning that it was the ideal way to bridge the gap between sculpture and engineering. Since then he has studied an eclectic range of arts related subjects such as: stone carving, ceramic sculpture, bone carving and computer multimedia production.

He works on a small and large scale with his sculptures ranging from small carved wood reliefs to large steel or cast concrete pieces. Inspiration comes from everything from Oceanic cultures to technological modern life. Found objects are particularly important starting points for his work.

Gail Hocking Through a Looking Glass Darkly Video projection 2/3, 3min 17sec $28,000 This project is made possible by

Artist Statement Born and raised in Aotearoa South Island I lived close to Ka Roimata Hine Hukatere (Franz Josef Glacier) and have witnessed this great Glacier recede at an alarming rate due to climate warming. Through the Looking Glass Darkly, reflects a personal interior/exterior response of an imperfect vison of the reality of a changing landscape. Disorientation, discomfort, uncertainty, and a symbiotic vulnerability are elemental factors in this cinematic vision. The emotive future uncertainty, grief and time embodied by human uncomfortableness are concepts I am exploring in this work. Struggling to orientate oneself in a changing environment and the destabilised disjointed nature and time we are experiencing are investigative trajectories. I ask the questions: As the erosion of a future memory haunts the present so how does one imagine an alternative pathway for our Descendants?

To acknowledge and engage in the uncomfortableness of a dissolving world can we then move forward.

About Born and raised in Aotearoa’s Mountain terrain Gail Hocking has a strong connection to the land and natural environments.

Hocking’s research and artistic output centres on the relationship between human and nature or non-human beings, emphasising environmental concerns through a lens of empathy, intimacy, and vulnerability.

Hocking graduated with a Master of Visual Arts (Research) from the University of South Australia in 2017. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) in 2014 at the same institution and a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Curtin University in 2007.

Hocking has exhibited widely, including; 2024 Drava Biennale Croatia, the Biennale touring three cities Koprivnica Art Museum, Osijek Museum of Fine Art, Art Gallery of Slavonski. Exhibition at Gallery CEKAO Zagreb, Croatia. Depot Artspace, Auckland; Gallery-Smith, Melbourne; Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery of Lisbon, Portugal; Museu Municipal de Penafiel, Sao Luis, Portugal; SASA Gallery Adelaide, Flinders Art Museum Adelaide.

Winner: 2025 Sorrento Art Prize Gareth Sansom I’ll go anywhere Oil on linen with 45rpm vinyl record 183 X 168 $50,000 Gareth is exhibiting courtesy of Station Gallery

Artist Statement ‘I’ll go anywhere’ is a line from the lyrics of the song Bored, a track on a 45rpm vinyl record by the band Destroy all Monsters.

Founding members of this band were Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw, two artists I consider kindred spirits. This painting (which includes the vinyl record) becomes a homage to that band and to those two artists.

About Gareth Sansom (1939 - ) is an influential Australian painter, known for his vibrant works with layered imagery and unconventional materials. His work explores themes of identity, sexuality, and mortality, often incorporating references to film, music, literature and art history. He held his first solo show at 19 years of age and has continued to exhibit widely in Australia and internationally; he was featured in a retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017. Sansom has been the recipient of many awards including the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize (NGV) in 2008, and the Dobell Drawing Prize (AGNSW) 2012.

Sansom’s works are held in the collections of all of the major Australian galleries such as NGA Canberra and NGV Victoria.

His work is also held in the contemporary collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA.

Geoff Overhue You can’t pay for rain Lead Crytal glas, brone, rope 70 x 40 x 40cm $7,000

Artist Statement This body of work explores the tension between strength and vulnerability, using bronze claws and lead crystal armour as metaphors for the paradoxes inherent in existence. Bronze, typically associated with durability and permanence, transforms into sharp, defensive extensions — symbols of both power and aggression. In contrast, the lead crystal armour offers a shimmering facade of protection yet remains fragile, breakable, and delicate under pressure.

Together, these materials highlight the precarious nature of balance, where strength and fragility coexist. The claws embody survival instincts, while the armour speaks to the illusion of invincibility, subtly reminding us of our inevitable vulnerabilities.

Through this juxtaposition, the work suggests that all things — emotions, relationships, and even physical forms — are ultimately fragile and in a state of dynamic tension. Everything is finally balanced, teetering between opposing forces.

About Geoff Overheu was a farmer for 25 years before completing his BA Hons at VCU Melbourne University in 2004. His practise covers sculpture, painting and film.

His practise is related to those objects that impact on the regional and rural landscape. His work is process-driven, and he is interested in examining how romanticisation of these landscapes has impacted on the culture and people that populate regional and rural Australia. His landscape is not an idealised landscape, there is no romance there. He examines some of the issues in contemporary dialogue and one inevitably comes away from his work asking more questions.

Glenn Clarke 2025 Flag Fence Felon Fiction, After De Chirico’s 1916 The Disquieting Muses World Currency origami shirts, cotton thread, wood, 120 x 120 x 250 cm, $125,000

Artist Statement It is good luck to give or receive ‘New Money’ on special occasions, Luna New Year, Birthdays, Weddings etc. I only use new bank notes for folding little origami shirts that I nickname ‘Single Entities’, never before used, never to be used, never before spent, never to be spent, signifying a specific value but no longer valued as money, just another art material. This figurative shirt form can convey many interpretations, metaphors and connotations. I often use these shirts folded from world currencies as symbols of multiculturalism, cultural diversity, cultural potpourri. Sometimes I use the new money shirt symbol as groups, as demographics, as soldiers, as statistics, sometimes emblematic as humanity. This strategy is paralleled with an ongoing search for a visual language or definitive form of communication capable of transcending verbal dialectics.

It’s about inventiveness and trigger points but it is also about impulses and emotions.

About Glenn Clarke is an Australian artist born in 1954 in Traralgon, Victoria. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, collage, and sculpture, often exploring themes of war, displacement, and memory. Clarke gained national recognition after winning the 2006 National Sculpture Prize for his work American Crater Near Hanoi #2 . His intricate collages and installations frequently incorporate folded currency and military imagery, reflecting on the economic and human costs of conflict . Clarke’s works are held in major collections, including the Australian War Memorial and the National Gallery of Australia. He has also collaborated with humanitarian organizations like Project RENEW and MAG in Southeast Asia, contributing to mine risk education and unexploded ordnance clearance efforts .

Graeme Altmann Oxides Rising Oil on linen, 180 x 152cm, $18,000

Artist Statement I work with the landscape. Born on the South Coast of Victoria, my inspiration has been driven by my love and fear of the sea.

I observe its power and its subtleties, its effects and influences.

Recently I have explored a continuing theme inspired by my road trips into the Western District of Victoria. Water has been a constant and its here I endeavour to explore the themes of stability and change: of our human need to strive for new ground, while often suffering a sense of loss and displacement.

About Graeme Altmann (b. 1966) is a Melbourne-based Australian artist known for his evocative landscape paintings and sculptural works. Born in Warrnambool on Victoria’s southwest coast, Altmann draws deep inspiration from the region’s rugged shoreline and inland terrain. His art explores themes of transience, memory, and human connection to place, often featuring solitary boats and windswept trees as metaphors for emotional and physical journeys. Altmann earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Deakin University in 1986 and completed a residency at Arthur Boyd’s Shoalhaven Studio in 1995. His work is held in major collections, including Artbank, BHP Billiton, and the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation. He has exhibited widely across Australia and currently maintains a studio in Highett, Victoria

Greg Somerville The Insolid Billowing of the solid Cloth, cord, thread, acrylic paint, 94 x 187 x 3cm, $4,500

Artist Statement My work involves the layering of collage and drawing-with-stitch on cotton. An interest in quantum physics, in ecological theory and buddhist ideology is reflected in the dynamic, interrelated, connected and layered imagery. This work is as much about the energies, tensions, relationships, within a microscopic biological system as about a macroscopic landscape. The fluid compositions with the stitched moving line, ever-changing boundaries between the various morphologies hints at the continuous movement from one form to another in the world as we know it. This leads to a profligacy of new forms with no end and ‘real’ boundary in sight.

About A multidisciplinary artist, Greg’s work is embedded in a buddhist/ecological perspective. Being a maker from a young age, Greg nevertheless aspired to be an Ecologist working for a while in the scientific world (botany/ecological survey), and later Art School (tech officer) and art commissioning world, becoming a full-time art maker from the late1980’s. It was an early interest in mandala design that set him on the path of textile design as a way to manifest these intricate patterns into a larger scale. Whilst much of his exhibition work is textile based, drawing and photography have come to overlap with textile workings.

Many years of keen observation of his local bioregion have all contributed to an aesthetic dwelling upon underlying patterns and relationships inherent in the world: patterns of water drops on leaves, the way lichen spreads on sandstone or the manner in which trees co-inhabit the landscape.

Ines Cook Hallway from somewhere to a trough over there Oil on linen, 73 x 47 x 5cm $ 6,500

Artist Statement Have you ever seen a dream wake up? I have. My painting projects is about the re-telling of specific dreams and daydreams drawing on elements of fantasy, romanticism, autobiographical symbolism and storytelling. With help from toys or sculpture, these dream-scenes can be recreated then captured in paint.

It is a retelling of the dreamt experience. Through my use of lighting, colour, imagery and composition I aim to recreate not only the specific, often-fragmented narratives from within my dream experiences but also the felt dimension of those dreams.

By making these experiences tangible they hold weight, feel grounded and are now cemented in physical reality. My paintings are recording real events. No matter how elaborate and fictitious these scenes may seem, I can always point to my set-up and say “but it happened right there”

About Inès Cook is an emerging Australian visual artist whose practice explores the intersection of memory, dream, and digital culture.

A 2024 graduate of the Adelaide Central School of Art, Cook gained recognition for her autobiographical paintings that reconstruct dream sequences using staged props and sculptural arrangements. Her work, described as “bizarre and somewhat hallucinatory,” draws parallels between painting and video game design, suggesting a fluid relationship between physical and virtual realities . Cook was awarded the Hill Smith Art Advisory Award and a 12-month studio residency at Praxis Artspace, where she exhibited in the group show Heaven in a Wild Flower .

Irene Barberis Choreographing Color #12: as long and as wide as Sol’s table; Chester Studio, USA, 2024 Italian tempera, gouache, polyester film, artists tape, 2.5 x 2m $40,000

Artist Statement Immersed in Sol LeWitt’s Chester studio fourteen hours a day over eight months, I reflected deeply on the synergies in our practice, shaped by a thirty-three-year friendship and mentorship. In 2019 I had the honour of being the first artist, outside his family, to reactivate his studio after his passing in 2007. The Choreographing Colour Series emerged as a response, both as painter and dancer, to one of thirteen music tapes Sol left behind in the studio: Tape 3184, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and Debussy’s Iberia. This triune set of works incorporates layers of discourse, conversations, and visual dialogues from 1973 onwards between me, Sol LeWitt (mentor and friend 1974-2007), Robert Hunter (first partner, Australian painter), and Adrian L. Page (husband and Australian sculptor).

Layers of separated and overlaid grid structures, playfully and intensely interrogate perceptions of the serialisation, systems, and modular units intrinsic in my practice, and each of the above artists.’

About Irene Barberis is a London-born, Australian-British artist whose five-decade international career spans painting, installation, performance, and large-scale collaborative projects. Based in Australia, Barberis is the founding director of Metasenta, an international research hub exploring intercultural and conceptual practices. Her vivid, high-chroma works merge intuitive gesture with structured systems, engaging themes of hidden geometry, philosophy, faith, and the feminine. Barberis positions drawing and painting as dynamic modes of knowledge exchange—poetic, political, and spatially immersive. A renowned curator, academic, and artist, she has exhibited extensively across Europe, the UK, USA, Middle East, and Asia. Major projects include The Tapestry of Light: A 21st Century Apocalypse—a 36-metre nanoparticle tapestry and the first full visualisation of the Book of Revelation by a female artist—and her ongoing research project The Concentric Influences of Sol LeWitt: Ten Countries. Through her evolving practice, Barberis redefines the studio as a site of global dialogue and visionary creation.

Jaq Grandford Ladylike Oil on canvas, 120 x 180 x 3cm, $11,000

Artist Statement Throughout history, there have been so many unspoken societal demands where women have been expected to behave in a certain way, dress in a certain way, speak in a certain way…to be ‘ladylike’. This painting is a celebration of a woman’s right to speak her mind - to swear in a pretty dress if she wants to. There are serious double standards when it comes to what men can say and what women can say. I’ve had a couple of people on Instagram say that they are offended by this painting. If she was wearing jeans and a hoodie, would they have been so offended?

If it was a man, would they? Possibly, but it’s less likely.

About Jaq Grantford specialises in fine art and portraiture. She has won numerous prizes, most notably the 2023 People’s Choice Award in the Archibald Prize with her portrait of Noni Hazlehurst, and the Darling Portrait Prize ( National Portrait Gallery of Australia) in 2022.

Her work is held in the MEAM Museum (European Museum of Modern Art), the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and many other collections.

Since she was a child, Jaq has been passionate about portraying the human form, and that love has persisted throughout her life.

To capture the essence of a person is one of her greatest joys.

She loves to tell stories through visual imagery: the influences, the environment, the cultural background, the joys and heartbreaks, and so much more.

(She also loves cats.)

Jason Waterhouse Weeping Caesia Bronze, brass, mild steel, 74 x 120 x 30cm, $8,500

Artist Statement Cast in bronze from natural materials Weeping Caesia is a hybrid form which possesses intriguing contradictions. This finely detailed and delicate sculpture appears to suspend order, inverting norms through expert manipulation of form and materiality.

Weeping Caesia is part of a continuous exploration by the artist into the relationship between the natural and manufactured object.

About Jason Waterhouse is an Australian artist whose sculptural and installation practice explores the intersection of the natural and the manufactured. Over the past two decades, he has developed a distinctive approach that transforms utilitarian objects—tools, cars, sheds—into poetic, hybrid forms that playfully interrogate contemporary Australian identity. With a background in sculpture from Monash University and postgraduate study at the Victorian College of the Arts, Waterhouse combines refined craftsmanship with the conceptual edge of the ready-made. Born in Penang, Malaysia, his work challenges traditional hierarchies in art by advocating a non-elitist, hands-on engagement with materials and space. His interventions often result in objects suspended between the familiar and the surreal, prompting reflection on culture, memory, and environment. Waterhouse has exhibited widely across Australia, including the Biennale of Australian Art (2018) and Scienceworks Museum (2016). He is Co-Director of Stockroom Gallery, Kyneton, and the public art fabrication studio, Sculpture Co.

Jim Pavlidis Still Life Oil on linen, 101.5 x 123cm, $6,500

Artist Statement Over the past 20 years I have regularly painted the Housing Commission block in Lennox Street Richmond. I regard these pictures as Still Lives, for while the tower is an imposing static fixture on the horizon, it is constantly changing. Throughout the day the colours change according to the light, while at night the lights in the individual flats turn on and off, a reminder of the many lives housed within.

There are 44 towers throughout Melbourne built throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. In 2023 the Victorian Government announced it would demolish the towers and redevelop the sites. Despite assurances that the new developments will include a social housing component, It is expected this will be far lower than what currently exists, meaning that many disadvantaged people will be displaced from their communities.

About Jim has held 26 solo exhibitions and participated in over 100 group exhibitions in Australia and England.

Career highlights include: Winner 2015 Rick Amor Print Prize with the lithograph portrait of musician Ross Hannaford; Churchill Fellowship to spend three weeks at Atelier Clot in Paris; State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship, resulting in a group of etchings and lithographs which were subsequently exhibited in a solo exhibition Accounts Of My Dancing Evenings at Geelong Gallery in 2014; Dream Home, a book of painted portraits of Greek migrants to Melbourne, published by Macmillan books.

He worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for The Age newspaper for 26 years, winning 3 Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards: Best Artwork 2015, Best Cartoon 2019, 2021 Public collections include National Gallery of Australia, State Libraries of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, National Library of Australia, Geelong Gallery, Regional galleries of Grafton and Mornington Peninsula.

Jo Mellor Broken Hill Cobalt Project, Wilyakali Country Textile. Digital textile print hand sewn with wool and embroidered with cotton thread 137 x 130 x 6cm, $19,000

Artist Statement In Broken Hill Cobalt Project, Wilyakali Country, Jo Mellor creates a fractal landscape. She digitally enhances a photograph of rusted mining machinery and prints it onto fabric. It’s then embroidered and hand-stitched. Her artwork is a response to the cobalt mine of Broken Hill, Wilyakali country, where the earth is dug up. Attracted to the healing properties of stitch, Mellor engages in the process of hand stitching to reimagine the landscape with the organic tracking of the crusts and layered patina of the rust. Adding to the incidental and organic growth that inevitably overcomes the scarred earth, scale becomes elusive – we see at once vast topographical mappings, as well as microbial universes. Either way, there is care and nurturing, a salve for the gaping scabs of the earth’s surface in the labour of hand-stitching. The cobalt blue colour is a homage to the mine site. Cobalt, in its mined state isn’t blue, but grey – extracted for its magnetic properties. By presenting the alchemic colour, Mellor plays with the symbolism of this colour – allowing us to imagine a bejewelled richness that may one day override this scarred and sacred landscape.

About Jo Mellor is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher working on unceded Cammeraygal, Barkandji, and Gadigal Country. Her practice is grounded in socially engaged, ecofeminist activism, with a focus on collaborative relationships and the perception of Country. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from UNSW, where her thesis—guided by Ngiyampaa Elder Aunty Beryl Carmichael— explored care and comfort in an era of solastalgia through yarning, deep listening, and expanded textile practice. Mellor also holds a BFA (First Class Honours) from UNSW and a Fine Arts Diploma from Parsons School of Design, NYC. Her work spans textiles, installation, painting, and film, and has been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including a solo show in New York. Recent exhibitions include Cobalt and Rust at Woollahra Gallery, a critical exploration of ecological crisis on Wilyakali Country. Mellor’s work engages deeply with activism, land, and Indigenous knowledge systems through sustained, community-based collaboration.

Jon Cattapan Continuing Ledge IV Oil and acrylic on linen, 185 x 250cm, $46,000 Jon is exhibiting courtesy of Station Gallery

Artist Statement Love, loss, and contemporary instabilities - we move slowly towards and away, from a precipice. We humans can now be seen as data points. And the world flows through us and beyond us as though we were now transparent ciphers.

About Jon Cattapan is a Melbourne-based painter and printmaker whose work explores urban topographies, geopolitical tensions, and the human experience of navigating contested spaces.

Best known for his luminous, layered cityscapes, Cattapan reflects on themes of surveillance, conflict, and community.

In 2008, he was appointed Australia’s 63rd Official War Artist and deployed to Timor Leste, where he began incorporating night vision technology into his aesthetic—a technique that continues to inform his practice. His survey The Drowned World (2006) and monograph Possible Histories (2008) cemented his place in Australian contemporary art. Cattapan has received major accolades including the Bulgari Art Award (2013) and the $50,000 Moira Gold Art Award (2016). His work has been widely exhibited across Australia and internationally, including in the UK, US, Italy, India, and Korea. Cattapan’s artworks are held in numerous major public and private collections worldwide, highlighting his sustained relevance and critical acclaim.

Joshua Cocking There is nothing for you here Oil on canvas, 152 x 183 x 5cm, $20,000 Joshua is exhibiting courtesy of Linton and Kay Galleries

Artist Statement This work is an investigation into Australian post-colonial myth and the over romanticization of remote Australia. This mythology is through a lens of personal experience as I reflect on my role as a Kartiya (white outsider) in remote Indigenous communities over the last 15 years.

I’m interested in discussing the influence, ramifications and legacy of the outsider when good intentions fail. The composition of this painting contains random objects which act as totems to naivety, a monument to failed ambition left by the outsider.

About Joshua Cocking is a Melbourne-born, Western Australianbased artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores themes of isolation, disconnection, and cultural tension within the Australian landscape. Having lived and worked in remote Indigenous communities in the Kimberley, Cocking draws on personal experience to challenge romanticised notions of outback life and interrogate the lingering effects of colonial presence. His works—often combining natural and synthetic materials—serve as poetic yet critical reflections on the environment, post-colonial narratives, and the naïveté of outsider intervention. With a background in Fine Arts from Monash University and Honours from Curtin University, Cocking’s practice is informed by humanist and environmental concerns. His paintings and installations act as totems to misplaced intentions and cautionary monuments to failed ambition. Cocking has exhibited widely across Australia and internationally, with recognition including the Lester Prize, Paddington Art Prize, and Shinju Matsuri Art Award. His work continues to offer a potent visual dialogue between place, memory, and identity.

Karen Napaljarri Barnes Ngatijirri Jukurrpa- Budgerigar Dreaming Acrylic on canvas framed, 152 x 152 cm, $11,000 This project is made possible by Dromana Framing & Gallery

Artist Statement When I was a young girl, I watched my granny paint Mina Mina, our special Country. She used bright colours—yellow, green, pink—and sang the Mina Mina song while clapping her hands.

She was a respected artist, flown to Country by helicopter, always speaking for the land and lighting fires. I travelled with her, hunting goanna, gathering bush tucker, and watching kangaroos, camels, and donkeys. Her favourite dog sat behind her in the car; I liked to sit close too.

She told me, you have to paint—Mina Mina, Women’s Dreaming, Water Dreaming. Start with circles, lines, and animal tracks.” I listened. I began painting like her—lots of budgerigar tracks, criss-crossing. Now I paint colourful birds—green budgies, cockatoos, bush turkeys—and cheeky dogs too. The birds are my friends. They talk to me.

About Karen Napaljarri Barnes is a Warlpiri artist born in 1992 in Lajamanu, Northern Territory. Now based in Yuendumu, she began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists in 2011, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, acclaimed artist Judy Napangardi Watson. Her vibrant, distinctive style blends traditional Warlpiri Dreaming stories with bold colour and contemporary expression. Karen’s work often features native birds, animals, and landscapes, infused with a sense of movement and personality that reflects her deep connection to Country and culture. Her Dreaming stories include Mina Mina Jukurrpa (Women’s Dreaming) and Ngatijirri Jukurrpa (Budgerigar Dreaming), among others. Karen’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Kate Owen Gallery in Sydney, and her work is held in numerous private and public collections. With a playful and dynamic approach, Barnes is considered one of the exciting young voices in contemporary Aboriginal art, celebrated for her originality and cultural storytelling.

Winner: Cellar Connections Prize Kate Briscoe Sandstone Rockface- Erosion #5 Sand, Marble dust, acrylic medium, pigments, inks, 147 x 152 x 4cm, $17,000

Artist Statement This work is from a series titled ‘Coastal Erosion’. It references a sandstone cliff face in Murramarang National Park on the NSW South Coast. I have been recording cliff faces there for many years; recently I observed massive erosion from severe weather events. The rock face has become fragile and pitted. I have recorded the delicate surface with its textures and colouration.

The pale sandstone is stained with oxides that wash down and seep through cracks in the rock.

My focus as a landscape artist is the geology of a place. I search locations where the geology is visible: cliff faces, gorges and rock platforms. I work on-site using drawing, photographs and rubbings. This information I use in the studio to make the works.

About Kate Briscoe is a Sydney-based painter and mixed media artist renowned for her abstract interpretations of geological formations. Born in England in 1944, she studied at Portsmouth and Leicester Colleges of Art before relocating to Australia in 1968. Briscoe’s work is deeply influenced by the ancient Australian landscape, particularly regions like the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, and the NSW South Coast. Utilizing materials such as sand, pigments, and acrylics, she creates textured surfaces that evoke the striations and erosions of rock faces, capturing the essence of time and natural processes. Her practice emphasizes the structural and tactile qualities of the earth, often focusing on splits, folds, and weathered surfaces. Briscoe has held over 50 solo exhibitions across Australia and internationally, with her works featured in major public collections including Parliament House Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Newcastle Regional Art Gallery. Her contributions have been recognized through multiple art prize nominations, including the Blake, Wynne, and Fleurieu Prizes. In 2016, she was elected a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute

Kate Shaw 89 Seconds to Midnight Acrylic on board, 120cm diameter, $14,000

Artist Statement Titled 89 Seconds to Midnight, this circular painting that captures the planet’s precarious state in the face of environmental crisis.

The title references the Doomsday Clock, a symbol of how close humanity is to global catastrophe. The artist’s signature marbled technique forms surreal landscapes—fractured mountains, molten lakes, glowing skies—that evoke both natural beauty and environmental breakdown.

Her process, echoing floods, eruptions, and glacial melt, reflects nature’s shifting forms under pressure. Vivid colours and liquidlike textures blur the line between wonder and alarm, urging viewers to confront the fragility of Earth’s ecosystems. The circular format reinforces the idea of cycles—of time, climate, and consequence—underscoring that we are trapped in a loop of destruction and renewal.

By merging the sublime with the ominous, 89 Seconds to Midnight becomes a visual metaphor for this critical juncture. It reminds us that time is running out, but not yet gone.

About Kate Shaw is an Australian contemporary artist celebrated for her vibrant, surreal landscapes that merge nature, abstraction, and ecology. Born in Melbourne, she uses experimental materials like poured acrylic, resin, and glitter to create marbled, reflective terrains that mimic geological and atmospheric patterns. Her work explores environmental fragility, climate change, and the spiritual dimensions of nature, offering dreamlike environments that inspire both awe and reflection. Shaw has exhibited extensively across Australia and internationally, with shows in New York, London, and Hong Kong. Her work is held in major public and private collections. Committed to sustainability, she collaborates with environmental groups and participates in residencies focused on art and ecology, continually pushing the boundaries of landscape painting.

Kevin Chin SoInclined Oil on Italian linen 140 x 200cm $15,500 Kevin is exhibiting courtesy of Martin Browne Contemporary

Artist Statement Kevin Chin’s oil paintings intersect inverted landscapes to advocate for borderless new territories. His new work evokes the sense of a parallel dimension, to question if we can transcend worldly borders altogether. Kevin is influenced by contemporary magic realist literature, a genre which poetically creates worlds that resemble our own but are slightly awry, and uses this as a lens to step outside ourselves and re-examine the way things are.

In ‘So Inclined,’ clothes hang across mountainsides.

In ‘Channeling,’ land formations that channel water and steam also channel hidden forces. A sense of security informs ‘Hideaway’ where remote shacks are protected by towering trees shimmering with colour.

Kevin experiments widely with colour to express the wonder that connects us to deeper states of being. These transcendent paintings offer differing perspectives, giving us license to move more fluidly through the world. Here we find a safe space to meander, to unlock something mystic.

About Kevin Chin is a Melbourne-based artist renowned for his expansive oil paintings that blend surreal landscapes with layered cultural references. His work delves into themes of belonging, migration, and global interconnectedness, often depicting dreamlike terrains assembled from fragments of distant lands. Employing a meticulous glazing technique, Chin creates luminous, atmospheric compositions that challenge traditional landscape conventions and invite viewers to reflect on identity and place. He has held over 20 solo exhibitions across Australia, the USA, Japan, and Singapore, including notable shows at Town Hall Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, and Martin Browne Contemporary. Chin’s accolades include the Albany Art Prize (2018) and the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (2015), and his work is featured in prominent collections such as Australian Parliament House, Artbank, and La Trobe University Museum of Art. Chin continues to explore the complexities of contemporary identity through his evocative visual narratives.

Highly Commended Lisa Roet Golden Monkey Stainless Steel 23k gold, 250 x 80 x 55cm Edition of 3, $153,000

Artist Statement The radiant Golden Monkey sculpture takes the form of the endangered Sneezing Snub Nose Monkey with its distinct upturned face and long tail. The newly discovered monkey is a critically threatened species found in southern China and in northern parts of Vietnam and Myanmar. Future generations of the small fragment populations of the monkey that remain are currently at risk due to deforestation of their habitat. Caste in stainless steel and plated in recycled 24 karat gold, this artwork nods to the Victorian era where animals played a prominent role in personal adornment and household decor, and also to the eras exploitative colonialism. By recreating this monkey as a sculpture to sit on the facade of a building worn by a building as a pin or brooch, it acts as a piece of building jewellery as an acknowledgment of the value and importance of biodiversity and preservation of nature.

About Lisa Roet is a Melbourne-based contemporary artist renowned for her multidisciplinary explorations of the intricate relationships between humans and our primate relatives. Since graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from RMIT in 1987, Roet has dedicated over three decades to investigating the intersections of art, science, and environmental advocacy. Her diverse body of work encompasses sculpture, drawing, video, and large-scale public installations, often inspired by field studies in Borneo and collaborations with primatologists and zoologists. Roet’s iconic inflatable sculptures, such as the Golden Monkey and David Greybeard, have been exhibited globally, prompting discourse on conservation and climate change. Her art delves into themes of identity, evolution, and the anthropocene, challenging viewers to reconsider humanity’s place within the natural world.

Recognized with numerous accolades, including the McClelland Sculpture Prize and the National Sculpture Prize, Roet’s work is held in esteemed collections like the National Gallery of Australia and the National Geographic Museum. Through her innovative practice, she continues to provoke thought and inspire action on pressing ecological issues.

Marion Harper Fallen (After Manet’s The Dead Toreador) Oil on Oak Panel, 50.5 x 80 x 3.5cm, $3,800 Marion is exhibiting courtesy of Gallerysmith

Artist Statement In May 1864, Édouard Manet first exhibited his painting The Dead Toreador - it was the same year that Paris opened its Public Morgue. Standing in the shadow of the Cathedral of the Ille de la Cite, the morgue was free and open to the public at all hours. It allowed people to walk through and view the bodies of the dead. The Internet has become another such morgue, a spectacle and witness to death, killing, bombing, occupation, and displacement. I have painted my son Dash here as a fallen toreador, felled by the brutality of the world this year.

About Marion Harper is a multidisciplinary artist living and working on Boon Wurrung/Bunurong Country in Merricks, Victoria.

With over 20 years of practice, her work spans painting, video, ceramics, installation, and photo-based media. Harper recently completed her MFA (Research) at the Victorian College of the Arts (2024), building on a BFA in Painting from the same institution. Her research-led practice explores layered themes of place, memory, and materiality. She has exhibited widely across Australia, including solo exhibitions at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, FortyFive Downstairs, and Centre for Contemporary Photography. Her work is held in the collections of QUT and La Trobe University, and she has been a finalist in the Bayside Painting Prize, Omnia Art Prize, and Senini Ceramics Prize. Harper has received grants from Arts Victoria and an Australia Council residency in Paris. She was a founding member of Basement Gallery and contributed to the Melbourne International Biennial project team.

Mark Cuthbertson Til death do us part PVC vinyl, timber plinth, fan and timer $11,000

Artist Statement Till Death Do Us Part is an ephemeral installation reflecting on the physical and emotional bonds we form—whether fleeting or lasting. Two sealed children’s raincoats, joined hand in hand, slowly inflate and deflate via a fan on a timer. As air fills their forms, they rise and stand; as it escapes, they gently collapse.

Mounted on a mirrored plinth with mirrored panels behind, the figures and their movements are endlessly reflected—inviting viewers into a quiet loop of breath, presence, and release. This rise and fall evokes the daily rhythms of life and the passage of time, from waking to rest, love to loss, and ultimately, life to death.

About Mark Cuthbertson is a Victorian-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, visual arts, and set design. Working on Wadawurrung Country, his work explores metaphors of colonisation and domestication within a broad national context. Cuthbertson’s art often transforms everyday materials, such as concrete, into evocative forms that challenge societal norms and perceptions. His notable public artworks include I AM (2021), a large-scale, text-based sculpture celebrating individuals with lived experience of disability, developed in collaboration with over 85 community members and installed across various sites in Geelong . Another significant work, Billa (2025), is a monumental birdbath sculpture featuring leaf impressions from local flora, emphasizing the connection between art and environment . Cuthbertson has also contributed to numerous exhibitions and festivals, including the Montalto Sculpture Prize, Lorne Sculpture Biennale, and the Biennale of Australian Art. Additionally, he has collaborated extensively with Back to Back Theatre, contributing to productions like Lady Eats Apple and Ganesh Versus the Third Reich . Through his innovative approach, Cuthbertson continues to engage audiences with works that are both thought-provoking and socially relevant.

Martin King Where are we going, where are we now, where did we begin?

Watercolour, tempera, pigment on drafting film and paper, 235 x 83cm, $22,000

Artist Statement Where are we going, where are we now, where did we begin?

(2025) The basis of this drawing is a landscape of ancient rainforest remnant in central Victoria. I have embedded a number of objects and art historical references in the work, including Albrecht Durer’s Celestial Globe of the Southern Hemisphere, old hard cover books with obscure drawings of landscape and birds and representations of old natural history photographs. The work embraces history, minutia and unfinished business! For me, drawing contains the potential to be complete and incomplete at the same time.’

About Martin King is a Melbourne-based artist celebrated for his mastery in printmaking, drawing, and painting. Born in 1957, he holds a Diploma in Fine Art and Design from Caulfield Institute of Technology, a postgraduate diploma from Sydney College of the Arts, and a Master of Fine Arts from Monash University. King’s work delves into the intricate relationships between humans and nature, often featuring birds and landscapes to explore themes of environmental fragility and cultural memory. His innovative use of etching, graphite, and watercolour has garnered him over 50 solo exhibitions and numerous accolades, including the 2023 WAMA Art Prize and the 2022 National Print and Drawing Prize. King’s artworks are held in prestigious collections such as the British Museum, National Gallery of Australia, and National Gallery of Victoria. Beyond his artistic practice, he served as Senior Printmaker at the Australian Print Workshop from 1994 to 2023 and has been a dedicated educator in printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts since 1990.Lady Eats Apple and Ganesh Versus the Third Reich . Through his innovative approach, Cuthbertson continues to engage audiences with works that are both thought-provoking and socially relevant.

Matt Calvert Ghost Corten steel timber and laminated plate glass- power required, 250 x 190 x 170cm, $42,000

Artist Statement Ghost is a sculptural reflection on the layered memories held within domestic space. At its centre is a glass chimney form— transparent, fragile, and central to the work’s architecture.

Inspired by the chimneys of old rural cottages dotted throughout Tasmania, it becomes both symbol and structure: a conduit through which air, memory, and energy are recycled across time.

The chimney form channels the invisible movements within a home—draughts, breath, and presence—evoking a sense of metaphysical drift. Influenced by Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, Ghost explores how intimate space is inhabited and remembered, and how homes themselves become porous vessels of shared experience. I have been developing this work over many years, returning often to the idea of houses as sites that inhale and exhale human history. Ghost invites viewers to experience the home not just as shelter, but as a living, breathing archive of the lives within.

About Matt Calvert is a Tasmanian sculptor renowned for his innovative use of recycled toughened glass, corten steel, and aluminium to create evocative public artworks and installations. Born in 1969 in Smithton, Tasmania, Calvert earned a Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours) from the University of Tasmania in 1993 and a Master of Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 1994. His distinctive practice employs a cold fusion lamination technique, transforming industrial glass waste into luminous, layered forms that often depict children, animals, and symbolic figures. Calvert’s works, such as Pointing Girl (winner of the 2015 Montalto Sculpture Prize) and Beacon in Frankston, explore themes of memory, loss, and transformation, frequently drawing from personal experiences, including the early loss of his father.

He has completed numerous public commissions across Australia and internationally, with pieces held in collections like MONA, Artbank, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Operating from his studio in Glaziers Bay, Calvert continues to push the boundaries of sculptural practice through material innovation and emotional resonance.

Matthew Quick You have arrived Oil on linen, 970 x 1520 x 3cm, $15,000

Artist Statement The fables of Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel & Gretel were cautionary tales warning children against the unknown outdoors.

Because for most of humanity, the world was largely an unknown space. Not any more. Now every landmass has been mapped, photographed and cross referenced. Because we have arrived.

Or have we?

About Matthew Quick is a Melbourne-based Australian artist renowned for his conceptual realist paintings that blend classical aesthetics with contemporary commentary. His work often juxtaposes Renaissance-inspired imagery with modern symbols, creating thought-provoking narratives that explore themes of power, identity, and societal norms. Quick’s distinctive style has earned him recognition as one of Australia’s top 50 artists by Business Review Weekly, and his pieces are held in prestigious collections, including that of philanthropist Judith Neilson. He has been a finalist or winner in over 100 national art awards, such as the Sulman Art Prize and the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize.

Beyond painting, Quick is also an accomplished writer, with his debut novel shortlisted for the Vogel Literary Award. His diverse career includes roles as a designer, art director, and lecturer, and he has lived and worked across Australia, Europe, and Asia, experiences that continue to inform his dynamic and engaging body of work.

Highly Commended Michael Le Grand The Alchemist Paint steel, 28 x 70 x 60cm, $20,000 Michael is exhibiting courtesy of Australian Galleries

Artist Statement The Alchemist embodies the principle of renewal and transformation. Using found and new steel objects, the work repurposes discarded industrial materials into a refined and harmonious form, breathing new life into the mundane. This act mirrors the alchemist’s quest to transform base matter into something noble and valuable, symbolizing rebirth and endless potential. The dynamic colour-shifting paint further emphasizes change and evolution, evoking the transformative processes central to alchemy. Through this reimagining, the sculpture becomes a metaphor for creative regeneration, turning overlooked materials into a work of aesthetic and conceptual significance.

About Michael Le Grand is a renowned Australian sculptor celebrated for his dynamic, large-scale steel works that explore the interplay of form, space, and colour. Born in Sydney in 1951, he graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1974 and furthered his studies at St Martin’s School of Art, London, in 1976–77. Le Grand has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, including at Sculpture by the Sea in Bondi, Cottesloe, and Aarhus, as well as the McClelland Sculpture Survey and the Mildura Sculpture Triennial. His work is held in major public collections such as Parliament House Canberra, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Australian National University. In 2011, the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery presented a major survey of his work. Le Grand served as Head of Sculpture at the ANU School of Art until 2007 and continues to create from his studio in Murrumbateman, NSW.

Peter Westwood Falling off the floor Oil paint on linen, 135 x 180cm $24,000

Artist Statement This work hits at the instability that most of us feel in a world where it’s difficult to grasp its form. As a person who experienced life-threatening violence, my world became a place that I did not recognise. And so today with a heating planet, wars, displacement, rising global intolerances the world that we are all experiencing seems familiar yet obtruse. Perhaps it’s not possible to devise an overarching view of our world and we should opt for a survival strategy of radical momentariness where fragments can be experienced as a totalising instance. Falling off the Floor puts forward the idea that to be in the contemporary is to experience life as an accumulation of ubiquitous and peculiar moments.

Rather than seeking structure within this tumult we could consider the chaotic moments as a sequence of equivalences where what matter is not a rationale but rather feeling our way forward.

About Peter Westwood is an Australian artist, curator, arts writer, and academic based in Melbourne. His work explores themes of impermanence, flux, and the psychological effects of living in uncertain times. Primarily a painter, he also works in drawing, printmaking, and installation, crafting atmospheric pieces that provoke reflection on self and society. Westwood holds a PhD from RMIT University, where he is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art. His research, titled Painting as a Marker of Change, examines how painting can embody social and cultural agency.

Over his career, he has presented more than 20 solo exhibitions in Australia and Europe, including recent shows at Blockprojects Gallery (Melbourne) and Boutwell Schabrowsky Gallery (Munich).

His work is held in major public collections, such as the National Gallery of Victoria and Auckland Art Gallery. Westwood is represented by Blockprojects in Melbourne and Boutwell Schabrowsky in Munich.

Phillip George Drowned Worlds Photo media print on Lucida paper, 85 x 240 x 5cm $11,900

Artist Statement Drowned Worlds documents volatility, contemporary genocide the demise of cultures, peoples and empires, using photography to metaphorically capture sunken archaeological sites were time and space have collapsed into one photographic temporal reality. Crafted from decades of travel across Greece, Asia Minor, Arabic & Persian Worlds, the exhibition reflects on how human influences shape landscape, leaving behind biographical traces of power, religion and wealth. Over millennia, conflict and destruction have shifted our perceptions of these landscapes, highlighting the transient nature of our world. Drowned Worlds, asks the viewer to, look, attempt to see, what lays before them, in an age were people are permanently distracted, were attention is an endangered skill, were there is a flood of online distractions to contemporary life, we perhaps fail to make time to simply sit, explore & appreciate. This work asks the viewer to look beyond the obscuring blue-haze & become immerse into the photographic terrain.

About Phillip George is a multidisciplinary Australian artist whose practice spans painting, photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Based in Sydney, George explores the intersections of Eastern and Western traditions, often reflecting on cultural memory, migration, and the complexities of identity in a globalised world.

His work is known for its poetic layering of historical and contemporary imagery, frequently drawing inspiration from Islamic art, surf culture, and maritime trade routes. George holds a Master’s degree in Painting and Digital Imaging from the University of New South Wales and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the Singapore Art Museum. His acclaimed series Borderlands featured surfboards adorned with intricate Islamic geometric patterns, challenging perceptions of cultural boundaries. George is also a respected academic and researcher, with a strong interest in visual cultures and spatial politics. His work is held in numerous public and private collections.

Phillip HOWe The eternal cycle Synthetic polymer paint, 122 x 183 x 3cm $7,500

Artist Statement A black crow pecks at the bones of a fallen dingo, unaware of the feral cat stalking in the shadows. The cat strikes, only to be taken by the very force it sought to overpower—the wild dingo.

A cycle of survival, struggle, and consequence.

On the surface, this is nature at work. But beneath, it tells a deeper story—of loss, resilience, and an unbalanced world. This work is both personal and universal. It reflects an artist wrestling with mortality, witnessing a mother’s final breaths stolen by cancer, and a land stripped of its essence. The dingo and crow, ancestral spirits, resist an invasive force that threatens their existence, just as First Nations people continue to fight against destruction.

It is a stark reminder of greed, colonisation, and a fragile world on the brink—where everything is connected, and nothing is spared.

About Phillip HOWe is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), with Gooreng Gooreng, Irish, and Scottish heritage. His practice encompasses sculpture, painting, printmaking, murals, and installation art, often incorporating locally sourced and repurposed materials. HOWe’s work is deeply rooted in themes of identity, environmental stewardship, and cultural reconnection, reflecting his commitment to protecting Indigenous wildlife and habitats. A signature motif in his art is the Wild Dog totem, symbolizing guidance and the interconnection of personal and collective narratives. His vibrant, rhythmic lines and abstract patterns draw inspiration from the Australian landscape and Indigenous knowledge systems. HOWe’s public artworks and community projects are featured across Australia and internationally, fostering dialogue and unity through creative expression. He actively engages in cultural workshops and collaborative initiatives, aiming to inspire communities to connect with Country and embrace sustainability. HOWe’s studio, located on Wurundjeri-willam Country, serves as a space for artistic exploration and cultural exchange.

Richard Horvath Hell Bound Digital print onto metal, 110.5 x 152 cm $5,000 This artwork has been generously printed by Print 2 Metal

Artist Statement Hell Bound is a 1957 American crime film which is spruiked by the tagline; A Cargo of Dames, Dope and Dynamite! Created by 3D modelling software, not AI. The anti-hero main character is doomed the moment he appreciates the comely charms of a gangster’s consort, who, noting his interest deliberately slips off her shoes and teasingly invites him to place them back on her feet. She tilts her recliner chair allowing him a peek up her skirt, the moment in which his fate is sealed.

The figure in the background who is wearing the dark suit is ‘Daddy’ who we first see in a strip club being annoyed by a strung-out junkie pleading for a hit, imploring the drug dealer with the desperate “Please Daddy” while the implacable Daddy retorts by angrily retorting he is trying to watch the show — which is ironic because he is blind.

About Richard Horvath is an Australian artist born in 1950, based on the Mornington Peninsula. His multidisciplinary practice spans screen printing, collage, graphic design, and digital art, often exploring themes of urban life, cultural memory, and visual storytelling.

Emerging from Melbourne’s vibrant alternative art scene in the late 1970s, Horvath contributed to the punk and DIY movements through raw, expressive posters and zines, some of which are held in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection . His early screenprints and collages reflect a fascination with cityscapes and subcultures. In the 2000s, Horvath transitioned to digital media, launching the Polygonal Cities series—3D-modeled prints that reimagine urban environments through a psychogeographic lens . His Re-Imaginings project further blends digital modeling with art historical references, creating surreal reinterpretations of classic works. Horvath’s art continues to evolve, bridging analogue and digital techniques to examine the layered textures of contemporary life. His work has been exhibited in Australia and is available through platforms like ArtMajeur and his personal archive .

Robbie Rowlands Limb Fabric, 100 x 5 x 5cm $8,800

Artist Statement The concept of ‘fabric’ holds dual significance in our lives— both as the material that clothes us and as a metaphor for the interwoven nature of society. A flag embodies these ideas through its materiality and symbolism, aligning diverse individuals under a shared representation.

In Limb, a tightly rolled section of fabric subtly reveals its origins as a flag. Only fragments—a stark white header, a hemmed edge, a partial star—remain discernible, leaving its alignment deliberately ambiguous. Within the severed lower section, sheared off at an angle any remaining symbolism is meshed together as one, appearing flesh like, intensified by the distinctive red color. This ambiguity fosters a sense of distance, emphasizing the transformation through separation. As the title suggests, the piece resembles a severed extremity—once part of a larger whole. By highlighting the act of separation, Limb examines what is altered, lost, or redefined when something is removed from its original context.

About Robbie Rowlands is a Melbourne-based Australian visual artist renowned for his sculptural interventions that explore themes of decay, memory, and transformation. Born in 1968, Rowlands studied sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts and undertook an exchange at Pratt Institute in New York, where he began experimenting with site-specific installations in abandoned urban spaces. His practice involves precise, often surgical cuts into everyday structures—such as walls, floors, furniture, and industrial objects—revealing their inner frameworks and histories. These deconstructions invite viewers to reflect on the fragility and impermanence of built environments. Notable projects include Tread Lightly for This Ground May Be Hollow in Detroit and If This Light Can Hold at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Rowlands’ work has been exhibited across Australia and internationally, and he is represented by Blackartprojects. He also lectures in sculpture and sound at RMIT University, contributing to the academic discourse on contemporary art practices.

Robert Croft Be this a Reflection of Me Wax Crayon on Mirror 195 x 195cm $9,900 This artwork has been generously supported by

Artist Statement In this dynamic series, the artist creates abstract drawings on mirrored surfaces—marks that become reflections of both the artist and the viewer. Each line is a gesture of presence, a way of being in the world through form and rhythm.The mirrored ground invites a layered encounter: image and reflection, surface and self. These works are not illustrative, but expressive—fluid, instinctive, and deeply personal. The artists process speaks through repetition and the tactile immediacy of mark-making.

Drawing becomes a quiet communion between artist and viewer, where meaning lives not in translation, but in presence. To look is to meet, however briefly, the trace of another’s world.

About Robert Croft is a Geelong-based Australian artist whose vibrant, tactile works embody the spirit of outsider art. Born in 1984, Croft is non-verbal and vision-impaired, yet communicates powerfully through his art, which spans drawing, painting, and mixed media. Working primarily at ArtGusto, a supported studio for artists with disabilities, he collaborates with sculptor Mark Cuthbertson to refine his instinctual, process-driven approach. Croft’s compositions are characterized by rhythmic layers of color and texture, often created using wax crayon, graphite, and pastel on board or paper. His inspiration stems from the pure joy of making, resulting in works that are raw, expressive, and unfiltered. He has exhibited at Boom Gallery and & Gallery, and was a featured artist in the 2024 Geelong Gallery performance Drawn In, where his live mark-making was accompanied by sound and projection.

Robert Lee Davis Antipodean Collage, book paper, ink, acrylic paint and pencil on board, 100cm round $11,000

Artist Statement My work explores memory, history, and place through painting, collage, and found objects. Influenced by early colonial coastal cartography, my paintings reflect both personal and collective histories, reimagining familiar and unfamiliar landscapes.

I combine archival materials, old texts, and elements from previous works to create layered compositions that mirror the fragmented nature of memory and the passage of time. Inspired by travel, urban life, and conversation, my practice weaves together symbols and references that evoke a sense of nostalgia, discovery, and connection. Through these layers, I aim to capture how our physical and cultural landscapes shape our stories and the memories we preserve.

About Robert Lee Davis is a Melbourne-based American-Australian mixed media artist whose work explores memory, place, and the layered nature of personal and collective histories. Born in Virginia, USA, Davis has lived and worked across the U.S., China, Egypt, and Australia, experiences that inform his richly textured collages and paintings. Utilizing materials such as found objects, archival texts, and natural elements, his art evokes the passage of time and the narratives embedded in landscapes. Influenced by artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, as well as composer Philip Glass, Davis creates works that are both poetic and contemplative. His exhibitions include Then, Now and Everything in Between at fortyfivedownstairs in Melbourne and Different Species at ifa Gallery in Shanghai. An advocate for community engagement, Davis has led collaborative projects like the Community Art Card Project and served as a TEDxMelbourne Community Artist. Through his art, he invites viewers to reflect on their own connections to memory, identity, and the environment

Ruth Allen Mobius Lens Hot sculpted glass, wooden disk, projected light, rotational mechanism 45 x 120 x 120cm $6,600

Artist Statement At the heart of my practice lies a fascination with the interplay between light, form, and materiality, where glass becomes both the medium and the message. Through the lens of the Möbius strip—a mathematical enigma—I explore the boundaries of dimensionality and perception. Hot-sculpted glass, in tandem with projected light, transforms this shape into a nonorientable surface that transcends conventional understanding.

The resultant optics, the dynamic caustics and refracted light, serve as a stage for the glass to perform its unique qualities: translucency, fluidity, and the intricate dance between transparency and opacity. In the act of creation, the process itself unfolds like a narrative—each twist, each stretch, and each gather of material revealing layers of conceptual depth. The form becomes an X-ray of itself, physically engaging with volume and space, inviting the viewer to contemplate the intersection of physics, geometry, and sensory experience.

About Ruth Allen is a Melbourne-based multimedia artist specializing in glass, light, and kinetic installations. With over 30 years of experience, her work explores the interplay of gravity, heat, and light, creating pieces that are both visually striking and conceptually profound. Allen holds a Bachelor of Arts in Glass from the Canberra School of Art (1993) and a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Glass from Monash University (2006) . She has exhibited internationally and collaborated with artists, architects, and designers to bring diverse visions to life. Her studio in Coburg North, known as the Glass Epicentre, serves as a hub for glass artistry, offering workshops and fostering a community dedicated to preserving this specialized art form . Allen’s commitment to sustainability is evident in her use of upcycled materials, transforming discarded bottles into functional art pieces. Her work has been recognized in prominent venues worldwide, reflecting her influence and innovation in the field of glass art.

Sonia Payes Woman in Bronze Polished bronze, stainless steel base, 180 x 90 x 90cm, $96,000

Artist Statement Woman in bronze; a glowing embodiment of feminine strength, beauty and transformation. This sculpture captures the essence of the female form rendered in gleaming bronze that reflects both light and life. The polished surface symbolizes resilience and permanence, while its fluid, organic lines evoke the dynamic nature of the human experience, seeming timeless, almost mythical, drawing attention to the inherent power and grace of womanhood.

Woman in bronze also reflects an interconnectedness with the natural world and its cycles of birth and regeneration. The smooth, flowing contours of the figure echo the movement of water, a source of life and transformation. This sculpture through its luminous presence, invites contemplation on the intersection of the human form, nature and time.

About Sonia Payes is a Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersection of humanity, nature, and technology through photography, sculpture, animation, and digital media. Born in 1956, she began her career in portrait photography before expanding into immersive, conceptually driven installations that reflect on environmental change and regeneration.

Central to her practice is the recurring image of her daughter Ilana, whose likeness is transformed into hybrid, post-human figures that symbolize resilience and the cyclical nature of life .

Payes’ work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 2024 Venice Biennale and the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh). Her sculptures, such as Emergence and Woman in Bronze, are featured in public art collections across Australia, including installations in Victoria and Western Australia . Her 2017 monograph, TRANSFORMATIONS: The Art of Sonia Payes, documents her evolution from photography to large-scale sculpture .

Stephen Haley Unsettled- Imagineering Ideation Operating Model (After Wheatley and Gainsborough) Oil on linen, 80 x 160cm $22,000

Artist Statement According to recent research (Bill Gamage, Bruce Pascoe) at British colonization the Australian landscape was not a wilderness, but remarkably resembled 18thC British ‘Gentlemen’s Estates’. It was the result of fastidious Indigenous land management. Failure to acknowledge this, and subsequent mismanagement, meant a schism. Settlers inhabit this country like we are camping. We remain unsettled - as do our debts.

My “Forgeries” and “Poor Traits” series reference the strange dislocation of this country – modern, yet stuck in a colonial past.

Adopting 18th C British landscape paintings, I paint in Australian trees, paint out the British (incompletely - they are indelible) and acknowledged the original artists. Titles are lifts from University and corporate ‘mission statements’ – managerial jargon with a similar disconnect to actuality. Not copies but reimaginings, the works seek to picture contemporary Australia – an unsettling, alienated space.

About Stephen Haley is a Melbourne-based visual artist, writer, and academic whose practice explores the intersection of real and virtual space in an increasingly digital and urbanized world. Born in 1961, Haley holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, where he is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. His work spans painting, digital media, and 3D modeling, often depicting simulated environments that critique consumerism, environmental degradation, and the psychological effects of modern life. Haley has held over 25 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 120 group shows internationally.

His work is represented in major collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Bendigo Art Gallery, and Artbank. Notable awards include the ANZ Visual Arts Fellowship and the R & M McGivern Acquisitive Prize for Painting.

Highly Commended Stewart McFarlane For Better or For Worse Oil on canvas, 125 x 155cm $16,500

Artist Statement Since I embarked, at the age of 16, on the artistic path, I have always been a figurative painter. I often tell unspecified stories.

My paintings are largely inspired by the locations I live in, which have been many. I will begin by recording a scene that has inspired me. Light is an important factor. As I paint the study on location, I imagine what a larger work will include?

My painting, For Better or For Worse is a ‘nod’ to one of my favourite figurative artists, Canadian, Alex Colville, in particular his painting, ‘Pacific’, 1967.The outback scene is of The Flinders Ranges, in South Australia, a place I have returned to many times and it has inspired several of my works. The seduction and the drama of the outback is something that has been rich material for so many memorable Australian authors and film-makers over the decades. I hope to continue that tradition.

About Stewart MacFarlane is a prominent Australian figurative painter known for his vivid, narrative-driven works that explore themes of identity, isolation, and the human condition. Born in Adelaide in 1953, he began his artistic journey at the South Australian School of Art at age 16, studying under David Dallwitz. In 1975, he moved to New York City to study at the School of Visual Arts, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977. During this period, he worked as a studio assistant for notable artists such as Alex Katz, Janet Fish, and Chuck Close. MacFarlane’s style combines pareddown realism with expressionistic touches and surreal lighting, often depicting enigmatic scenes with nude or semi-nude figures. His work has been exhibited extensively across Australia, the United States, Germany, and Malaysia, with over 70 solo exhibitions to his name. His paintings are held in major collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. MacFarlane continues to live and work in Australia, contributing significantly to contemporary figurative painting.

Takahiko Sugawara United Series 2025 Mild steel and powder coated, 130 x 25 x 180cm $55,000 This artwork has been generously supported by

Artist Statement When I was a high school student in Yokohama in the late 1990s I played the tuba in the school marching band. What struck me was that, despite the mixture of personalities, opinions and backgrounds, we still managed to come together and perform as a unified group. Inspired by this, I felt compelled to express a similar sense of harmony and repetition in my artwork. With my sculptures I try to convey a pure unity, cutting different metal shapes then joining them together in rigidly intricate layers to create something complete and indivisible.I’m fond of metal because there’s no limit to the size. My sculptures can be bigger, taller and wider. My primary medium is 1.6mm mild steel, which is light and easy to bend. I previously used heavier materials, such as 12mm steel, manipulated with a crane and forklift.

Nowadays, even without that equipment, I still like to make big sculptures.

About Taka Sugawara is a Japanese-born sculptor based in Ballarat, Victoria, whose practice spans from intimate studio works to large-scale public installations. Born in Milan in 1979, Sugawara studied sculpture in Japan, earning a master’s degree before relocating to Australia in 2012 . His work is characterized by the use of layered and welded metal elements—often corten steel or gold leaf—arranged in rhythmic, repetitive forms that evoke both industrial precision and organic growth. These sculptural compositions explore themes of time, memory, and the meditative potential of material repetition. Sugawara has exhibited widely across Australia, including at the Lorne Sculpture Biennale, the Biennale of Australian Art, and the Yarra Sculpture Gallery . In 2023, he participated in Kairos, a contemplative group exhibition at Kinross Arts Centre, where his work contributed to a dialogue on temporality and spiritual presence .

Tamara Dean Peony Photograph 166 x 126 x 3cm $20,000 Tamara is exhibiting courtesy of Michael Reid Sydney & Berlin

Artist Statement Peony is a piece from my Flower Duet series, a title inspired by the opera Lakmé.

The series explores the delicate equilibrium between humanity and nature, evoking a sense of serenity, grace, and quiet melancholy. In this work, a figure glides effortlessly through a world bathed in prismatic light and lush flora, where peonies and roses bloom amidst vibrant, verdant foliage. Her body glides through the ethereal, subterranean world in a subtle yet fearless pas de deux, her gaze boldly penetrating a new and unexplored realm.

This piece is a meditation on the delicate balance between nature and humanity, set within a meticulously crafted environment that blends the organic with the artificial. The scene is both immersive and surreal, drawing viewers into a space where the boundaries between the natural and the imagined dissolve. At its heart, Peony is an exploration of grace, colour, and the transformative power of nature.

About Tamara Dean is a critically acclaimed Australian photo media artist whose practice spans photography, installation, and moving image. Born in Sydney in 1976, Dean’s work delves into the intricate relationship between humans and the natural world, often exploring themes of ritual, vulnerability, and the rites of passage in contemporary life. Her evocative imagery frequently features figures immersed in natural settings, challenging the perceived separation between humanity and nature. Dean’s notable series include Endangered (2018–2019), which reframes humans as vulnerable species within fragile ecosystems, and In Our Nature (2018), commissioned for the Adelaide Biennale, highlighting seasonal cycles and human connection to the environment. Her works are held in major collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, and Parliament House Art Collection. Dean has received numerous accolades, including the 2019 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize and the 2011 Olive Cotton Award. She is represented by Michael Reid Galleries in Sydney and Berlin.

Warren Breninger Be Thou My Vision #33 Amor Vincit Series Mixed media, 112 x 76 x 5cm 35,000

Artist Statement This work from ‘Amor Vincit Omnia Series’(‘Be Thou My Vision’) taps into the seated figures slim historical recurrence, from Egyptian sculpture to representations of Madonnas, and more recently works by Cassatt, Munch, Gauguin, Moore and Bacon’s seated popes, also Feminist readings of the politics of the female body, including the seated figure The whole series is restricted and claustrophobically conceived, with each figure corralled into a cramped space. A consistent intention of the Series is as a metaphor for artistic pregnancy, its fecundity, elevation and isolation, wholly reliant on an art world that specializes in manufacturing only two things- visibility and invisibility. This work is #33 from the Series of 44. Its title quotes from an ancient hymn, suggesting both the high contemporary requirement of artistic vision and yet the deeper religious depths that reinforce significance which are often mocked, absent or culturally supressed.

About Warren Breninger is a Melbourne-based Australian artist and poet whose multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, photography, collage, and mixed media. Born in 1948, he has exhibited since 1971, presenting over 30 solo exhibitions and participating in numerous group shows across Australia. Breninger’s work is deeply rooted in figurative expression, often exploring themes of faith, mortality, and the human condition. His acclaimed Expulsion of Eve series exemplifies his layered, process-driven approach, combining photographic techniques with hand-applied media to interrogate the divide between appearance and reality.

A practicing Christian, Breninger’s art reflects a spiritual inquiry, frequently revisiting biblical motifs through a contemporary lens. His works are held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, and Art Gallery of South Australia.

Breninger holds a Master of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts (2001) and has received numerous awards, including the Blake Prize and the Lady Fairfax Portrait Award.

Highly Commended Yvonne Boag Incidental Bruises and Shadows Acrylic on canvas, 183 x 137cm $12,000

Artist Statement My paintings are a visual communication using an intuitive code, difficult to describe, with a complexity that is emotive and directly visual. I see my paintings as similar to flag hoists used in maritime communications for signalling at sea. In this series of paintings I have been remembering experiences of my past that I have been unable to describe with spoken language. A past that can be brought to the surface, triggered by news events or experiences of people close to me. I have tried to make sense of these memories and feelings. The title of this work is ‘Incidental Bruises and Shadows’. They are a memories from my past and an awareness of the continuation in our society of similar experiences of others who have been victims of domestic violence and violence towards women.

About Yvonne Boag is a Scottish-born Australian artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, printmaking, sculpture, and artist books. Born in Glasgow in 1954, she emigrated to South Australia in 1964 and studied under Franz Kempf at the South Australian School of Art, graduating with a Diploma of Fine Art in Printmaking in 1977. Boag later earned a Master of Fine Art from Monash University in 2000. Her work is characterized by bold colors and abstract forms that reflect her experiences of displacement and cultural exchange, particularly between Australia and South Korea. Since her first visit to Seoul in 1993, Boag has divided her time between the two countries, drawing inspiration from Korean symbolism and aesthetics. She has exhibited extensively across Australia, Europe, and Asia, and her works are held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Boag has also taught at institutions such as the National Art School and Sydney College of the Arts, and served as a visiting professor at Ewha Womans University and Hongik University in Seoul.

Zachary Beven Dark Places II Oil on canvas, 102 x 152cm $2,200

Artist Statement I’m interested in obscurity—how bodies submerge and resurface in darkness, the tension between visibility and erasure, the blurring of desire and history, and the way painting itself can become atmospheric, immersive, and alive.

About Zachary Beven is a Melbourne-based emerging artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, installation, and immersive media. A 2024 Honours graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), Beven’s work investigates states of transformation, intimacy, and the ephemeral nature of human experience.

His installations often incorporate elements such as projected light, smoke, and sound to create atmospheric environments that evoke feelings of disorientation and transcendence. In his series “Group Critique One,” Beven utilized smoke and stereo sound to craft a sensory-rich space, while “Blue Hour” featured oil on canvas works presented in darkness, challenging viewers’ perceptions of visibility and presence. Through his art, Beven explores the boundaries between the corporeal and the ethereal, inviting audiences to engage with the transient moments that define human existence. His innovative approach positions him as a compelling voice in Australia’s contemporary art scene.