Far North Queensland

Title: Anachronism: A Self Portrait
Medium: Photography
School: St Stephen's Catholic College (Mareeba)

Artist Statement:
When researching modern history artists, I stumbled upon Eleanor Antin who recreates historical moments. This inspired me to create my own but instead of recreating why not just add myself in? I bought an outfit online and then I dressed up in a dress, heels and a tiara. My mum helped me take the photos and my dad was a model, so I did the right poses. Then I added the images onto photoshop and after tweaking them endlessly I settled on 6 out of 8 possible images. After they were printed, they were put into golden ornate frames to make them look the part.

Title: The Downward Spiral
Medium: Digitally manipulated images in mat-board frames
School: Cairns State High School

Artist Statement:
It is in society’s cruel dictation of what ‘should be’ that warps self-worth, our reflections being twisted, distorted to an irreversible, unrecognisable point. Though, expectations aren’t all to blame, for our own contorted thoughts light the fuse to our breakdown: a decay of self-image. This deprecation exists as a plague, gnawing away until it has engulfed your very existence. It is this degeneration of self-perception that infects you and I, a contemporary illness with no true cure. As depicted in my timeline of breakdown, this demolition of worth has inspired my own wretched insecurity and self-deprecation as a chronic burden. These moments of vulnerability are captured eternally as polaroids, hacking through layers of practiced smiles to reveal the grotesque desolation underneath. With the hope that my decline will help you truly see, I present to you my downward spiral.

Title: This is not a Kulup
Medium: Installation
School: St Monica's College (Cairns)

Artist Statement:
This artwork explores my Torres Strait heritage through the Kulap shaker, appropriating Magritte’s pipe to reflect cultural symbolism. The work invites interaction through sound, deepening connection. Kulaps are used in island dances for celebrations like tombstone openings and birthdays, each holding rhythm, memory and ceremony. Though this is not a real Kulap, but an image, it asks us to see beyond the visual—to honour culture through meaning and experience.

Title: In memory of Grumpy
Medium: Sculpture
School: Trinity Bay State High School

Artist Statement:
If you could capture decades of life within a house, what would it look like? Passed down to a new generation, I inherited a lifetimes display of my grandfather, Grumpy’s photographs. Our family home, lovingly built on over generations, featured everywhere. Our faces changing as much as the wallpaper. Through the visual language of domestic objects and salvaged offcuts, I connect the past and present through a palimpsestic process. Walls are embellished with family relics, a blueprint of his house and wallpaper, capturing our life within the home. Together it forms a house—a whole life in a home.

Title: Poem for the Patriarchy
Medium: 14 digital prints and a film displayed on an iPad
School: Cairns State High School

Artist Statement:
As a young woman in a society that values gender equality, it’s easy to forget the struggles still faced by women elsewhere and throughout history. Poem to the Patriarchy reflects on both the progress achieved and the urgent work ahead toward true equality.

Title: Beneath the Surface
Medium: Film/electronic imaging
School: Cairns State High School

Artist Statement:
I have always felt emotions deeply but have lived my life unable to express them outside. As teenagers, we are expected to look stable from the outside and our true emotions are always suppressed. The organs I used in this artwork such as the heart, lungs, stomach, liver and kidneys are animated as they move reactively depending on emotions such as excitement, sadness, anger, anxiety and fear. This artwork is displayed as an installation, and it creates an experience that allows the audience to face their inner emotions directly by standing in front of a projector and visualising organs superimposed on their bodies. Visualising how invisible emotions affect the body expresses the overlapping and complexity of emotions. It’s not just organs anatomy, but organs for living through emotions. Beneath the Surface offers a moment when the audience realises that the invisible emotions are indeed existing inside the body.

Title: Maladaptive
Medium: Film/electronic imaging
School: Freshwater Christian College (Brinsmead)

Artist Statement:
When does imagination become dangerous? While reflecting on my own destructive responses to stress, I discovered the concept of maladaptive daydreaming, a state where imagination becomes a compulsive escape, almost like a drug that feels impossible to live without. This idea became the foundation of my short film. Using digital art and videography, I explored how this experience affects my mental state through a personal and expressive lens. At first, bright blobs of colour take the form of fish, guiding me through a dreamlike world, before gradually shifting into faceless creatures that embody detachment and unease. Colour, sound and movement were central to building this emotional transition, helping convey the gradual loss of joy as imagination turns hollow. My intention was for viewers to feel the contrast between the vibrant beginnings and the empty ending, revealing both the beauty and the hidden dangers of excessive daydreaming.

Title: Futility
Medium: Installation
School: Trinity Bay State High School

Artist Statement:
Those days are the worst. Those days when you want to shrink yourself small enough to go unnoticed. Those days when you wish you could cover yourself from head to toe so that no one would recognise you. Those days you’ve felt you were hideous. All our attempts to be hidden are futile, we are always visible. Futility, explores those days and invites you to hide within.

Title: Warupaw Uu (Echo of Drums)
Medium: Painting
School: St Monica's College (Cairns)

Artist Statement:
Warupaw Uu (Echo of Drums) honours the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and memory through ritual, ceremony and oral traditions. In the late 19th century, European anthropologists sought to study and record Indigenous peoples and cultures, which they often perceived as ‘curios’ and ‘vanishing’. This artwork emphasises the endurance of First Nations peoples and cultures through my interrogation and reframing of colonial writings and imagery directly related to my personal history and cultural heritage. I challenge ‘official history’ by shifting the gaze from a colonial perspective to reframe and reinterpret the archives from my own lived experiences grounded in self-determination and cultural continuity. My depictions are not marks of an end, but of ongoing life—quiet traces that persist through time, place and space. Warupaw Uu (Echo of Drums) celebrates the resilience of First Nations peoples and cultures, affirming that what has lived, endures—continuing and evolving through each generation.

Title: Fear Finis
Medium: Sculpture
School: St Augustine's College (Cairns)

Artist Statement:
The origin of fear has been a philosophical question explored through art throughout history and cultures around the world. Some see it as an extension of life, while others fear its intangibility and inevitability. Many have traced its origin throughout humanity’s evolution and have determined it is death and pain that lie at the heart of every fear and phobia. Fear Finis attempts to recontextualise the abstract and terrifying concept of death into a tangible creature that targets the primal fear of predation within the audience. Alternate approaches such as contorting and splicing human and skeletal forms communicate the universal concept of death through an unnatural and uncanny expression of form. Fear Finis invites you to not only experience the guttural and uncanny discomfort the sculpture elicits, but to engage in its curiosity and recognise the creature as a reflection of primal phobias spurred by our evolutionary history.

Title: Dreams & Nightmares
Medium: Installation
School: Woree State High School

Artist Statement:
My name is Zyon Zuki Yarus Nona, and I carry my Athe’s names, names white Australia tried to erase. What your invasion didn’t finish, this climate crisis will. While you debate policy, saltwater eats the bones of my ancestors. My art is not reconciliation. It’s my rage. It’s my old blood. Their resistance. While we live in this nightmare, I hope this reminds you of your privilege; you live comfortably in this first world country while Zenadth Kes fights for our basic human rights. This mobile is a metaphor of my dreams. I'm challenging your colonial legacies. This is decolonisation. This isn’t meant to soothe you. My existence, voice, presence, language and the truth may be a nightmare for you. You can perceive my art however you want to and that is something I cannot change. But if I have offended you, then I have fulfilled my purpose.