Young Creatives Awards

Title of work: After the Rain

Artist's Statement: My artwork After the Rain explores the overlooked side of my house with weathered fencing, messy overgrown plants, and an old soccer ball, deflated from not being used. As my neighborhood and others face rezoning and high-rise apartment blocks, by capturing these ordinary spaces, I hope to preserve a visual record of quiet courtyards and gardens, that are slowly disappearing. This painting was inspired by historical photographs of Inner West homes and backyards in the Council’s Local History Collection.

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Title of work: Burwood Chinatown

Artist's statement: Burwood Chinatown has always had a special place in my heart. I also grew up watching Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. I discovered that Burwood Chinatown had been inspired by it! After my discovery, I was motivated to create a hyper-detailed digital painting of Burwood Chinatown that showcased its vibrant community, atmosphere, and welcoming vibe! I tried to capture the electricity and flavour in the air and the surreal beauty of Burwood Chinatown. The closer you look, the more detail emerges.

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Title of work: Hapalochlaena Maculosa

Artist's statement: Blue-ringed octopuses are one of the smallest and deadliest animals in the world, yet many people are attracted by their bright blue rings. I made this blue-ringed octopus in its home environment, a rockpool. This was sculpted by hand over two sessions: fired once, then painted and fired again. This sculpture was particularly challenging because of the fine work required, and the risk of breakage in the firing process. I find sculpting relaxing after a long day at school.

Title of work: Hear the Feeling

Artist statement: I created this artwork to represent the human experience of listening to music. I've always found that there is a strong connection between music and emotion, whether it's music as an expression of how we feel or how music influences how we feel. I used different colours and shapes to symbolise the different sensations and emotions of music. I aim for this artwork to be a visual representation of how music feels, how it influences, and how it expresses.

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Title of work: The Highlands

Artist's statement: In August this year, me and my family went to Scotland where we went for walks through the Highlands and through mountains of heather. It was a rainy day and were walking up a hill next to a creek and got to the top where there was an old brick wall structure from a battle in the 1700s.

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Title of work: Slice of Joy

Artist's statement: In Slice of Joy, I explore the thrill of embracing unfamiliar opportunities. Using the contrast of a realistic self-portrait, symbolising everyday mundanity with vibrant red and blue buildings reflecting new elements and oddities in life. This unexpected mini-civilisation inside a fridge mirrors the library and its transformative impact in Matt Haig’s “The Midnight Library”. Ultimately, my work shows how mundane, daily choices can spark extraordinary discoveries, urging viewers to uncover their own "slice of joy" every day.

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Title of work: Veiled Vineyards

Artist's Statement: During a car trip to Victoria with my family, we drove through the bush and went into wine vineyards where there were no grapes growing and the vines were leafless, but veiled with a cloth, which gave them a slightly eerie look.

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Title of work: Walk?

Artist statement: To gain inspiration for this set of photos, I read a book called The Puppy Who Was Left Behind with my younger sister. I created the collection with my DSLR camera and used natural night from the window. I created this collection to show the importance of caring for pets and to remind people that although pets aren't the only thing in our world, we’re the only thing in theirs.

Title of work: Bloodlines

Artist statement: In my photographic series, I sought to explore ephemerality through the fragility of flowers. By planting roses in black ink, I observed the effect of the colour bleeding through the veins in petals in different ways. Through this process, I bring attention to the inherent humanity of nature as affected by, and often overlooked by, mankind.

Title of work: Coach and Crew

Artist statement: I am passionate about photography and capturing meaningful moments. In these images, I wanted to document the connection between a coach and students during a cold training night. Rather than focusing on sporting action, the photograph highlights teamwork, commitment, and a sense of belonging. The group gathered in the stands reflects the support and friendships that develop through sport, showing how photography can preserve everyday moments and tell powerful stories.

Title of work: Genealogy

Artist statement: My quilt documents what the modern family looks like, in a world where traditional family portraiture has been abandoned in favour of the more efficient selfie. I’ve created an archive of my loved ones, alongside their chosen ‘objects of significance’ and connected these together to create a quilt, paying homage to traditions of heirlooms and dowries – a practice likewise lost to our rapid consumerist culture. My art responds to this loss of sentimentality by privileging the physical and tactile.

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Title of work: Newtown

Artist statement: Having moved many times throughout my life, in much of my art processes I take on the role of an observer. When I stumbled into a gay bar in Newtown, I was immediately drawn to the people, the lights, and music, engulfed by the vibrance of the scene. Through a sweeping perspective, like an enticing gateway, I invite the viewer to immerse themselves into the tight-knit Inner West community, finding joy and expression in this fast-paced, chaotic world.

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Title of work: Petrichor

Artist statement: My series of photographs Petrichor captures the relationship between natural and urban environments in the Sydney area. Through the setting of an old depot that has fallen into disuse, it highlights nature's existence in small pockets around the city that it has been able to reclaim when left undisturbed by human activity.

Title of work: Three of Us

Artist statement: I look at my friends across the painting, and they look at me. The light hits them just right. By recording it, I have bound us together in the moment, immortalising that green, beautiful summer, and their sunshine smiles. What an incredible gift to love and be loved. What an honour, too, to be part of a group of three.

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Title of work: Two-headed Janus, where are we to go?

Artist statement: My work is a quatripartite (collection of graphite drawings that function as an inquiry into the future. It interrogates the increasingly integrated technological and organic landscapes in our contemporary world, and disputes where we, as a society, are heading. Primarily, I incorporate the metaphor of Janus, the Roman god of transitions/passage, to represent the dual nature of our technologically advanced milieu, extending upon his mythological ability to see both past and future, and to look both inward and outward.

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Title of work: 2049 Beginnings

Artist's statement: 2049 Beginnings marks the beginning of my artistic relationship with glass. This piece was inspired by Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, as accessibility to hot glass is heavily reliant on access to specialised studios, and her stream-of-consciousness style. It serves as a vessel for my artmaking and a point of reflection as I continue to develop my practice using glass as a medium.

Title of work: Abandoned Car

Artist statement: Once an aggregate quarry and local dumping ground, the now Putta Butta Wetlands is a thriving wetlands reserve. The quaint walk is nestled amongst swampland and neighbours active industrial sites, subtly hinting at the site’s extractivist past. Remnants like this abandoned car shape its unique landscape and is just one of several detritus reclaimed by nature.

This photograph was captured on 35mm film and developed using a homemade eco-developer made from discarded scrap metal recovered from a dumping ground.

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Title of work: As Silence Passes Me By

Artist statement: My artwork was photographed from a bus window travelling to Canberra. The work represents nature in its sublime silence. I drew on the Australian Gothic genre to bring out the visceral disconnection to nature that our modern world drives us towards. As a neurodivergent person this feels particularly potent, as nature allows me a profound silence. Overall my work hopes to express the present struggle to find a natural silence in our lives, to allow us a deeper perspective.

Title of work: Breakdown

Artist statement: I bought the camera used to photograph these images from a local guy I had always come to but never bought from. He told me it was 'sort-of' waterproof. Across my nonstop trip in my home country, this camera slowly broke down, and eventually completely died on a boat on the river. In the end, these images represent that poor Konica and its perpetually fleeting life.

Title of work: connection in translation

Artist statement: across generations and continents, some things are lost in translation, but somehow when I return to the place my parents call home, everything feels connected.

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Title of work: CRASH

Artist statement: “The car is the ultimate extension of the human body, a mobile exoskeleton that redefines our relationship to time, space, and flesh.” — David Cronenberg on the making of ‘Crash’ (1996).

Named after Cronenberg's film, the collection CRASH embodies a tension between body and machine. In our rush toward modernity – the constant push for more speed, more efficiency –automobile machines have placed our movement, our time, and our sense of self on a track towards an inevitable collision.

Title of work: Duality of Man

Artist statement: Duality of Man is a deeply personal piece inspired by one of the people I admire most. Yorgos is both a gifted pianist and a dedicated Muay Thai fighter, two disciplines that seem worlds apart but are equally demanding in their own right. I wanted to capture the contrast and harmony between these parts of him through the composition and dynamic lighting: the physical intensity of fighting and the emotional depth of music.

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Title of work: Hunting for Stars, Searching for Fish

Artist statement: An ode to play, connection, and discovery.

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Title of work: let’s stay here all day

Artist statement: I wanted to capture that feeling of girlhood – relaxed and unobserved and utterly content. We'd spent all day together, and I'd sketched out my friends as we laid on the beach: all sunburnt and sleepy and crusted with sand. The sketch was later transferred to canvas, and painted.

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Title of work: Petal

Artist statement: Petal explores human vulnerability through the motif of a flower, inspired by Eikoh Hosoe and Han Kang's visceral imagery. The rose is traditionally an emblem of both beauty and violence as its thorns hold the potential to draw blood. In Petal, the floral silhouettes serve to synthesise the human figure with the flower itself, suggesting that, like the beauty of a rose, intimacy requires becoming vulnerable to the possibility of pain.

Title of work: Pondering

Artist statement: This is a self-portrait, inspired by Be a River, Not a Pond, a collection of metaphorical readings about navigating life’s obstacles and personal growth. It uses water as a metaphor: ponds representing stagnation, comfort, and complacency, while rivers represent movement, adapting and development. Having graduated from university with no further plans or clear vision of my future, I am in a pond! The water reflects this stillness, while ripples and unconventional colour use suggest change, mental shifts, and growth.

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Title of work: Sydney marches for Palestine

Artist statement: Photojournalism from the 2025 March for Humanity, Sydney Harbour Bridge Protest.

Title of work: The dreamers are drifting, the tranquil is passing, the miracles are waiting

Artist statement: I enjoy documenting scenes of everyday and the mundane, instances of people captured like a moment in time, and bring attention to these simple, unfluctuating life moments where everyone is concentrated and immersed in their current affairs. The everyday and ordinariness of it is present in all lives, yet is overlooked because of its normality. In a trip overseas, acting as a flâneur, I wanted to capture the personal story and glimpse into the lives of strangers I saw.

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Title of work: two billion light years away i saw a star sigh

Artist statement: This series of works was made in tandem with my sixth album with the name two billion light years away i saw a star sigh, where as I was creating the album, I made artworks for each song on it. I will leave the meaning for each up for interpretation but listening to the tracks they each represent will contextualise each work for the viewer.

Title of work: Unspoken

Artist statement: Unspoken explores youth, memory, and the emotions that are often difficult to express directly. I used oil painting and layered textures to create a soft, dreamlike atmosphere, while the blue roses cover part of the face like a barrier between the figure and the viewer. The contrast between the vivid flowers and muted background suggests how certain memories remain clear while others gradually blur. The work reflects uncertainty, loneliness, and the quiet process of growing up.

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