Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize 2025
Intersection - Warners Bay Jetty. Edition of 2 archival prints on cotton rag paper.
I’m honoured to share that my work has been selected as a semi-finalist in the Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize 2025. This year’s semi-finalists were chosen by Tory Loudon, Director of New Annual, and I’m grateful that my photograph has found a place in this exhibition among so many strong voices.
Newcastle Art Space once again leads the promotion and coordination of this rich art prize on behalf of The Newcastle Club Foundation. The Club has made a strong commitment to local artists through its art collection, and through the establishment and ongoing evolution of this annual acquisitive art prize. In working with NAS as its partner to deliver the Prize, the Club recognizes the history and strength of NAS as a conduit to our region’s artistic community and beyond.
The Exhibition opens at the Newcastle Art Space Gallery on October 3, 2025 when the 11 finalists will be selected.
My photographs are born at the meeting points of people, places, and happenings. When I encounter a scene that holds the potential to become a photograph, I search for the interplay of light and shadow, the convergence of lines and shapes. Sometimes humanity is present, but more often it is only the quiet trace of its passing.
‘Intersection - Warners Bay Jetty’ carries weight for me. It is a place where moments have unfolded—some mine, others belonging to lives that brushed past here. In black and white, the scene takes on a sense of nostalgia, while the water, softened by a four-minute exposure, encircles a totem-like form, leaving space for memory, reflection, and recollection.
The intersection I sought in making this photograph is not only visual or compositional; it is woven into my being. It resonates with experiences that remain within me, and with the memories of others who know this place. If you recognise it, your own nostalgia may surface. That is what I love about it—that it exists as a vessel for story: of recent yesterdays, and of the long past, when the first custodians walked these grounds. Layers upon layers of intersection, uncountable.
To echo the idea of memory as journey, the work is presented in a letterbox format, centred on a wide sheet of cotton rag paper, edged with a fine black frame. And like Fitzgerald’s reminder that we are “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” this photograph acknowledges that no matter how far forward we move, we are continually drawn back to the places and moments that made us.
I look forward to sharing this work in the semi-finalist exhibition and to seeing the breadth of stories and visions represented there.
