North Queensland

Title: Bleached Beauty
Medium: Wearable art
School: St Patrick’s College Townsville

Artist Statement:
What can we do to keep the beauty of the ocean alive? Bleached Beauty is influenced by contemporary artist Nick Verstand’s textured metal surfaces and contemporary artist Iris Van Herpen’s wearable art; inspired by the layered materials and forms of her creations. Through the contemporary and formal contexts, Bleached Beauty refers to the realisation that the ocean is struggling due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere causing coral bleaching. A symbolic, textured and layered coral skeletons wraps around this aluminium neckpiece designed to be presented at POSE Wearable Art Show during The North Queensland Festival of Arts in 2025. 75% of tropical coral reefs have experienced heat stress severe enough to trigger bleaching. You are invited to reflect on the issue of coral bleaching, how damage goes beyond what we can see, and the consequential juxtaposition of beauty in death.

Title: L’hiver sur un Téléski
Medium: Painting
School: The Cathedral School of St Anne and St James

Artist Statement:
L’hiver sur un Téléski (Winter on a Ski-lift) details my experience as an exchange student in France over 2 months, immersed in an unfamiliar culture and landscape. Coincidentally, the ski-lift became a striking metaphor of the experience. The lift serves as a liminal space where one is caught in a hazy moment of transition. This in-between state, where we are momentarily detached from our known surroundings, represents a journey that is both physical and metaphorical. For some, the ski-lift— the idea of taking on a new life at such a young age —may be a daunting experience. For others, it is a period of deep contemplation and introspection fuelled by self-doubt. No matter the perspective, one is ultimately fulfilled with a new-found sense of connection with oneself. Retrospectively, the experience becomes one to be acknowledged as a necessary obstacle, informing and shaping a new approach to life.

Title: First Impressions
Medium: Video
School: Pimlico State High School

Artist Statement:
How do our perceptions create false identities? To what extent do others’ perceptions influence who we are? First Impressions explores this focus, aiming to challenge perceptions of people through the contemporary and personal contexts. In this inquiry, I applied the alternate approach of ‘inviting others in as joint constructors of meaning’ and documented this experience through a short film edited with a music effect using CapCut. My artwork aims to bring awareness of how our perceptions of others are often biased and incorrect, thus creating false identities and leading individuals to form their identity around constraints others place on them. Upon viewing my artwork, the audience is invited to consider their own answers to 3 questions, allowing for greater emotional impact when the answers are revealed and exposing them to the realities of their assumptions.

Title: Vicissitude
Medium: Drawing and animated video
School: St Patrick’s College Townsville

Artist Statement:
We relish in the freedom and wonder of dreaming, an experience deeply intertwined in our brains, but remaining almost impossible to control. Dreaming is not always a pleasant experience; bright and harmonious dreams can become corrupt with the worries of our subconscious. Vicissitude highlights the unique and fluid experience of entering our dreams. Artists Noah Kocher and Jono Dryart inspired formal context, Kocher inspired the research into digital art, while Dryart inspired experimenting with large-scale realism. Within a personal and formal context, an animation inspired by an abstract interpretation of my personal dreams is projected over a realistic pencil drawing of a pillow. A singular feather is followed through the animation and symbolises the person asleep. The juxtaposition of the surreal animation to the realistic pillow encourages audiences to reflect on personal dreams, and the blur between reality and fantasy. Follow the feather and explore the subconscious of another. 

Title: Hydraulic Action II
Medium: Installation
School: St Patrick’s College Townsville

Artist Statement:
Water has the power to give and take life. It is essential in shaping biotic existence and its power is unsurpassed in its ability to erode and transport sediments. Hydraulic Action II explores the process of coastal erosion, through the formal context of manual manipulation and colouring of leather hard porcelain. Handmaking this sediment has given me insightful appreciation of the power of water to erode. Diane Kazakis’ layered structures and Olafur Eliason’s approaches to installation art and innovative use of light has inspired my contemporary vision. Water’s ability to carve through landscapes, transporting sediment in its path as it moves is captured in Hydraulic Action II. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, the recognition of beauty in the mundane, is at the root of my contemporary contextual focus. I invite you to explore the beautiful aesthetic of light refracting in nature, the resin emulating the way light reflects on water.

Title: Home
Medium: Installation
School: Townsville Grammar School

Artist Statement:
Welcome! Come walk through and explore my neighbourhood. Re-experience and unpack memories, events, people and connections you feel when you are home. My favourites are sliding down the stairs on a mattress with my brothers, walking my dog along the beach with my family and playing in my backyard with my cousins. All these places make me nostalgic thinking about them as they feel like home. Everyone has a home, a special place they belong to. Houses can look the same, but it is the unique memories made with people that create that feeling of home. I am lucky, I get 2—my Mum’s and my Dad’s house. I travel back and forth between houses, packing up memories and my favourite things. I will pack up and carry my memories forever with me when I leave and call another place home. It is almost bittersweet.