EXHIBITION PROJECTS – GALLERIES
Small

Winner

Fairfield City Museum & Gallery
In the fibre of her being
In the fibre of her being contemplated the role of women as carriers and preservers of heritage. Through textile-based approaches, 12 artists spoke to their personal and collective histories. Navigating their familial and gendered lineages, and exploring their cultural and hybridised identities, the artists considered legacies of womanhood, diaspora, and community. The exhibition was designed to exemplify a broad cross-section of CALD backgrounds representing Western Sydney audiences, with artists spanning from emerging to established, across cultures, geographical locations and generations.

Highly Commended

The Lock-Up
RADICAL SLOWNESS
In this fast world, RADICAL SLOWNESS offered a point of difference. Curated by Anna May Kirk and Tai Mitsuji, the exhibition pulled together a diverse cross-section of artists to critically wrestle with the very idea of time in the 21st century. The project facilitated the commissioning of 6 new works by Emma Fielden, Aude Parichot, Izabela Pluta and Tané Andrews, made site-specifically for The Lock-Up’s historical spaces. These commissions spoke to the exhibition’s premise of moving away from our fast-world obsession with speed.

EXHIBITION PROJECTS – GALLERIES
Medium

Winner

Ngununggula | Retford Park Southern Highlands Regional Gallery
Land Abounds
Land Abounds presented ambitious works by leading contemporary artists and brothers Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Abdul Abdullah in dialogue with significant video installations by one of their greatest influences, Tracey Moffatt AO. It included two newly commissioned works created by the brothers as a result of direct personal encounters with the landscape in the Southern Highlands. The exhibition drew on collective memory and experience, unpacking how the representation and perpetuation of culture, knowledge and tradition can be transferred through storytelling.

Highly Commended

Blue Mountains Cultural Centre
Post-haste: Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro
Post-haste showcased a significant body of work from artistic duo Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro. The exhibition explored themes of ‘flight’ and ‘speed’, reflecting on the forced stasis of the world due to COVID-19 through site-specific interventions, installation, video and photography. Several new works were made in collaboration with local high school students and residents of Blackheath, including a 5-metre high aeroplane wing titled Revolting Youth.

Highly Commended

Gosford Regional Gallery
Darkinjung Ngurra’ (Country) Women’s Spirit Connection
Darkinjung Ngurra’ (Country) Women’s Spirit Connection was developed with artists from the Mirring Aboriginal Women’s group to celebrate the creation story of Biame travelling from Mt Yengo with his two wives as depicted at the Bulgandry site, Kariong in New South Wales. The exhibition included fibre artworks, traditional canoes, photographs, murals, possum skin cloaks and new media. It provided the opportunity to engage with First Nation’s storytelling and knowledge of the surrounding Central Coast region as an access point for the audience to relate to local geography with a deeper understanding.

Highly Commended

Maitland Regional Art Gallery
Daughter of the Lightning Snake: Noŋgirrŋa Marawili
Noŋgirrŋa Marawili is regarded as one of the most important artists in Australia today. Daughter of the Lightning Snake presented over 30 of the Yolŋu artist’s work in New South Wales for the first time. The exhibition drew its title from Marawili’s nomenclature; her father’s name was Mundukul (Lightning Snake), also the name of the serpent of the ocean, Burrut’tjj (Water Python). It featured works on paper, bark paintings, and larrakitj (ceremonial hollow poles) that capture the atmospheric forces of water, wind, and ocean as a celebration of Country and culture.

Highly Commended

UNSW Galleries
Pliable Planes: Expanded Textiles and Fibre Practices
Pliable Planes was a major exhibition drawing together 12 Australian mid-career practitioners reimagining practices in textiles and fibre art. The project reflected on the use of textiles to chart social and cultural change, responding to historical modes of production and presentation and underlying histories of domesticity and gendered labour. Through expanded painting, assemblage, performative gesture, sound, video, and installation, Pliable Planes disrupted understandings of how textiles and fibre are defined and used in contemporary practice.

EXHIBITION PROJECTS – GALLERIES
Large

Winner

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
Jamming with Strangers
What does it feel like to connect with people through music? This is the central question of Jamming with Strangers, an exhibition that explored the role musicians, communal spaces, fans and friends all play in fostering a sense of belonging. By exploring music as a broader network of activities, Jamming with Strangers showcased the practical and symbolic ways music fosters feelings of belonging and the role creative communities play in influencing broader social cohesion.

Highly Commended

Campbelltown Arts Centre
Yirran Miigaydhu Biyangalaygu Ngurayu / Weaving our ways to Country
Yirran Miigaydhu Biyangalaygu Ngurayu, translated from Dharawal language as ‘Weaving our ways to Country’, was the second and most ambitious presentation of newly-created works by Yirran Miigaydhu: Aboriginal Women’s Weaving Group. The project developed as a large-scale exhibition, featuring woven vessels made with dyed raffia and cane, combining traditional and contemporary techniques. The exhibition strengthened journeys, revived connections and celebrated the long-standing tradition of creating meeting space on Dharawal land.

EXHIBITION PROJECTS – MUSEUMS
Small

Winner

McCrossin’s Mill Museum
Spaces Make Lace
Spaces Make Lace featured 180 laces to illustrate centuries of lace history, beginning from 1580 and spanning 400 years. The exhibition showcases the collection of the late Janice Jones who began collecting lace in the early 1980s. Images and equipment on display explored how lace was made, who wore it, and who made it. This helped demonstrate the social, political and economic importance of the European lace industry across history.

Winner

Ron Horan Museum
20 Fortians that Shaped the Nation
As one of only a few museums dedicated to the notable contributions of public education in New South Wales, 20 Fortians that Shaped the Nation highlighted 20 Fort Street school alumni and how they influenced the country. Among them are significant athletes, judges, politicians, writers, performers, doctors, explorers, mathematicians, scientists, activists, and artists. The exhibition included items from the archive not often seen, including correspondence from the Governor General, The Right Honourable Sir John Kerr, original artwork by Margaret Preston and first edition published research of the 1911-1914 Australian Antarctic Expedition by Sir Douglas Mawson.

EXHIBITION PROJECTS – MUSEUMS
Medium

Winner

Old Dubbo Gaol Museum
The Gallows Gallery – Old Dubbo Gaol Museum Upgrade Stage 1
Old Dubbo Gaol is a State Listed heritage site comprised of assorted original prison buildings, artefacts and structural remains dating from 1871-1966. The Gallows Gallery upgrade included innovative interpretive design, conservation, and landscaping work, alongside adaptive reuse of gaol buildings and spaces. This upgrade created a high-level museum environment that upholds the historic site and collections as one of Dubbo’s most significant and highly visited cultural tourism attractions. The upgrade included landscape treatments, interpretive artworks and multimedia, and free-standing signage systems. The ceilings and linings introduced to a former exercise yard were stripped and converted into the climate-controlled Gallows Gallery to conserve and display original gallows relics and related artefacts.

Highly Commended

Fairfield City Museum & Gallery
Extra/Ordinary
Extra/Ordinary was an interdisciplinary exhibition project which used the Fairfield City Museum & Gallery collection to address issues of diversity and inclusion in museum spaces. The Museum & Gallery engaged artists and writers to interrogate museum practices and share personal narratives by combining contemporary art, prose, historical objects and photographs in a captivating installation that pushed the boundaries of museum displays. Commissioned work explored the value of objects, interrogated institutional practice, and challenged the authority and relevance of the museum to critically reflect upon the people, stories and histories which have been represented in museum collections and those that have been left out.

Highly Commended

Hurstville Museum & Gallery
Our Journeys | Our Stories
Our Journeys | Our Stories explored the Chinese migration history of the Georges River area. Interweaving historical objects with commissioned work by six contemporary Chinese-Australian artists, the exhibition highlighted the significance of Chinese migration from the 1860s and the ongoing contribution of the Chinese community to the region. The exhibition’s commissioned work responded to the historical objects, documents, photographs and artefacts included in the exhibition. An app, virtual tour and art trail were created to coincide with the exhibition, making it accessible to a wider range of physical and online audiences.

EXHIBITION PROJECTS – MUSEUMS
Large

Winner

Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences)
Eucalyptusdom
Eucalyptusdom investigates the Powerhouse Museum’s unique and long-standing relationship with the gum tree, reckoning with the Museum’s colonial practices and the extraction of materials from Country. The exhibition presented over 400 objects from the Museum’s Collection, many of which have not been on display for over a century, alongside 18 contemporary commissions spanning the fields of design, architecture, film, applied arts and performance. It aims to bring the eucalypt from its ubiquity into focus, highlighting the museum’s complicity in the exploitation of this keystone species, which is vital to our existence.

Highly Commended

Sydney Jewish Museum
Shaken to his core: The Untold Story of Nolan’s Auschwitz
Sir Sidney Nolan’s Auschwitz paintings have remained largely unseen, their stories untold for nearly sixty years. Shaken to his core: The Untold Story of Nolan’s Auschwitz is a ground-breaking collection of works never before seen in Australia, depicting Nolan’s response to Auschwitz and the trial of high-ranking Nazi official, Adolf Eichmann. The Sydney Jewish Museum was uniquely placed to host these works on the subject of the Holocaust and contextualised them within their historical time and place, fusing visual arts and history and offering an interpretation of the Holocaust through a distinctly Australian lens.

Highly Commended

Sydney Living Museums
How to Move a Zoo
When Sydney’s zoo moved from Moore Park to Taronga, the sights and sounds of animals parading through the city captured the hearts of Sydneysiders during the upheaval of the Great War. The exhibition was inspired by recently digitised glass plate negatives which tell the little known but fascinating tale of 850 animals that were relocated from Moore Park to Taronga in 1916. How to Move a Zoo reimagined this unique moment and invited audiences to discover a sense of wonder through immersive storytelling, playful displays, interactives, and site activations.

ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS
Small

Winner

Woodford Academy
Artist in Residence: Yvette Hamilton ‘Space, Time, Light’
Space, Time, Light was a residency program with Yvette Hamilton, a local artist and academic researcher. The project combined art, science, technology and history that centred on the Academy and its role as an observation point during the 1874 Transit of Venus, with a focus on photographic images made at the time. In addition to contributing to the artist’s PhD research, the residency culminated in an exhibition at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre.

Highly Commended

Port Macquarie Museum
New Journeys Broad Horizons
New Journeys Broad Horizons was an artist-in-residence program, where artist Lucy Frost responded to objects from Port Macquarie Museum’s collection, culminating in an exhibition. The program explored the collection in innovative ways and unlocked a new approach for the Museum to engage new and broader audiences through participation in creative workshops and public programs.

ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS
Medium

Winner

Fairfield City Museum & Gallery
Spinoff: a safe place for dangerous ideas
Spinoff: a safe place for dangerous ideas was a youth development program and event for young people and creatives living in the Fairfield LGA and Western Sydney to reignite social connections and mental wellbeing after the COVID-19 lockdowns. The event featured artist talks with exhibiting artists, drop-in workshops, and performances from emerging local talent. Fairfield City Museum & Gallery, Fairfield City Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) and PYT Fairfield partnered in the program

Highly Commended

Bank Art Museum Moree    
The Painted River Project Moree
The Painted River Project Moree brought together contemporary artists, ecological experts and local Gamilaroi knowledge holders, with regionally based creatives for a weekend of site specific ‘en plein air’ workshops. These sessions facilitated transformative discussions on the health of our region’s river systems and interpretation of the environment through art. The project allowed visitors and locals alike to learn about the richest agricultural shire in Australia, while immersing themselves in a landscape and culture that has changed significantly over the past 250 years.

ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS
Large

Winner

Murray Art Museum Albury MAMA
TABLE
TABLE was a weekly public program that engaged new and existing local community audiences in cross-cultural exchanges around food, as part of the Museum’s summer exhibition SIMMER. Each session featured a different presentation led by five local cooks that demonstrated their process, answered questions, offered advice on where to obtain specific ingredients locally, and introduced a selected recipe for audience members to make at home.     

Highly Commended

Chau Chak Wing Museum/Gujaga Foundation
Eight Days in Kamay
To mark the eight days when the Endeavour was anchored at Kamay (Botany Bay), Chau Chak Wing Museum partnered with the Gujaga Foundation to present a series of lectures sharing Dharawal perspectives on the significant event that occurred 252 years ago, and the continuation of Dharawal culture today. The project focused on the return to Country of three spears taken by James Cook, as well as the 37 community-made spears exhibited in Kamay (Botany Bay) spears: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The program reflected on cultural continuity and survival, and embodied the Museum’s commitment to decolonisation, public education and excellence in communicating ideas.

INNOVATION & RESILLIENCE
Projects with a budget of $10,000 or less

Winner

Lismore Regional Gallery
Collage Club
The Lismore Regional Gallery was entirely inundated by flood waters on 28 February, 2022. Following the flood, the Gallery, together with the Creative Recovery group and the Quad, created The Collage Club, a weekly creative healing event. The Collage Club made space for the community to recover through gentle art focused activities. These ongoing events have been the most consistent touchstone of the Gallery’s public engagement and will continue with a monthly guest artist. Continuing this project supports recovery in a sensitive and compassionate way, reinforcing the significance of art in the role of overcoming trauma and adversity.

Highly Commended

Bega Valley Regional Gallery
MOTEL Art Fair 2021
Delivered while the Gallery was closed for redevelopment, the MOTEL Art Fair promoted regional renewal and recovery through cultural tourism. The event was conceived as a culture-led response to the combined impacts of drought, bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking over a retro motel during the typically low tourist season, local artists each occupied a room to sell and promote their work in the style of a pop-up art fair. The event delivered a sell-out opening event, attracted over 1,000 visitors and made over $40,000 in art sales.

INNOVATION & RESILLIENCE
Projects with a budget of between $10,001 and $100,000

Winner

Anzac Memorial
Anzac Memorial Veteran Artist in Residence
The Anzac Memorial developed a unique pilot Veteran Artist in Residence program to facilitate and promote art practice within the Memorial’s contemplative atmosphere. The program interprets contemporary military experience for contemporary audiences, using the voices of veterans themselves to complement the Memorial’s curatorial narrative delivered through traditional exhibitions. The program culminated in a public exhibition, A Soldiers Healing, which reached a national and international audience and challenged societal stereotypes of Australian servicemen and servicewomen.

Highly Commended

Bank Art Museum Moree
Nguwalay (here) Residency
The Nguwalay (here) Residency saw the delivery of an Indigenous artistic and curatorial project. The residency grew from the desire to redesign Bank Art Museum Moree’s permanent Indigenous exhibition space to honour cultural objects by laying them to ‘rest’ and ‘heal’. Gamilaroi man Dennis Golding, an artist with strong family ties to the Moree area, was engaged to bring the project to life. The result was a Gamilaroi mural that wraps around the interior of the gallery, activating a disused walkway to showcase cultural objects from the collection and held in keeping for the community, now at ‘rest’ within the landscape of the mural.

Highly Commended

Maitland Regional Art Gallery
Conversations: Art & Dementia
Conversations connects people living with dementia and their carers to the world around them through art, reducing social isolation and building resilience in the Gallery’s community. Held three times a month onsite at the Gallery, each 90-minute session includes a tour of current exhibitions, followed by an art making activity. The program addresses the challenges of social isolation by creating meaningful opportunities for connection

INNOVATION & RESILLIENCE
Projects with a budget of $100,00 or greater

Winner

Mudgee Arts Precinct
Construction and delivery of Mudgee Arts Precinct to the community
The construction of Mudgee Arts Precinct’s state-of-the-art regional gallery provides a cultural hub for the region and creates a platform for diverse local talent. The innovative design of the building was complemented by an exceptional inaugural year of programming which highlighted the region’s artists and celebrated a strong connection to place. The local community and visitors to the region are embracing the new artistic hub with attendance reaching over 23,000 in 12 months.

Highly Commended

Orange Regional Gallery
Orange Regional Gallery Extension Project
Designed by architect Sam Marshall, the Orange Regional Gallery Extension Project included a new 270 square metre contemporary gallery with ground-breaking lighting design, a 74-seat gallery theatre, a state-of-the art storage and conservation area and refurbishments to existing spaces. The extension offers residents and visitors to Orange a distinct cultural experience in which the best in local, regional, national and international art can be experienced.

The ACHAA award for Excellence by an Aboriginal Curator

Winner

Dr Bronwyn Bancroft
Made with Love
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative
Dr Bronwyn Bancroft is a proud Bundjalung Woman and artist. A Founding Member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative (established 1987), Bancroft has been the Co-operative’s volunteer senior strategist since 2009. Made with Love was a retrospective of the life and work of Bundjalung-Munanjali Elder, Euphemia Bostock. The exhibition featured textiles, ceramics, sculpture, silk paintings, printing, and photography. Bancroft’s vision for the exhibition was to celebrate the diversity and longevity of Bostock’s artistic practice, bringing recognition to an important and consummate NSW Aboriginal Artist.

The ACHAA Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to NSW Aboriginal Culture, Heritage and Arts

Uncle Clem Dodd and the Dharriwaa Elders Group
The Dharriwaa Elders Group (DEG) is an Aboriginal cultural organisation in Walgett that supports Elders’ wellbeing, protects Aboriginal cultural heritage and promotes Aboriginal cultural values, knowledge and identity.

Dharriwaa Elders Group was born in November 2000 after Elders had worked together on projects since 1998. The group takes its name from one of its sacred sites, Dharriwaa (Narran Lakes) which means common meeting place in Yuwaalaraay language.

DEG’s Full Members are Aboriginal people over 60 who live in Walgett. Uncle Clem Dodd joined in 2011, was elected as an Elders Councillor (i.e. a director) in 2013 and has served as its Speaker (i.e. chair) since the 2014 AGM. He is known and loved by all for his good humour, gentle manner and deep cultural and language knowledge which he is always generously willing to share.

DEG projects support Aboriginal Elders to resume leadership roles in the community, keeping active and healthy and interacting with the other generations of the Walgett Aboriginal community.

A large part of DEG’s work is to protect and support Aboriginal cultural heritage and values that are on Country – not just the waterways and landscapes but also in the lived daily experience of the Walgett Aboriginal community.

Cultural maintenance of Country is a regular activity for members. DEG has nominated Aboriginal Places under the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Act and undertaken many protection activities for Country, participating in parliamentary inquiries and leading advocacy.

The Dharriwaa Elders Group’s cultural collection is recognised as nationally significant and contains knowledge that its members strive to share through cultural engagement activities for the Walgett Aboriginal community and more broadly through exhibitions, publications and schools and community education activities.

Dharriwaa Elders Group has also contributed to Walgett’s economy through tourism support, including the Namoi River walking tracks and interpretative signs, scarred tree protective enclosure at the Barwon Inn, and Walgett’s first Aboriginal arts and crafts shop alongside its longstanding Keeping Place exhibition in the main street of Walgett.

NSW Health Infrastructure Arts and Health Award

Gosford Regional Gallery and Gosford Hospital (Central Coast Local Health District)
This project brings together local Aboriginal Elder Aunty Daniella Chedzey, and local fibre artist and experienced art therapist Lisa McArthur-Edwards, to hold weaving workshops at Gosford Hospital with patients and staff, with an exhibition to be held at the Gosford Hospital Exhibition Space at the end of 2023.

Outstanding Contribution by an Individual Volunteer

Ammin (Bobby) Nullah Shamroze
Broken Hill Mosque Museum
Ammin ‘Bobby’ Nullah Shamroze is the son of Broken Hill cameleer Shamroze Khan, who came to Australia from Peshawar (once Afghanistan, now Pakistan) in the late 1890’s, and to Broken Hill around 1905, to work with camels. His mother was the daughter of cameleer Faizullah Zaidullah and Crasha Maude Nohab.

Bobby was born in Broken Hill in 1940, where he still lives today with his wife Janet, their three children, seven grandchildren and eight greatgrandchildren.

Co-coordinator at the Broken Hill Mosque Museum, the oldest Mosque in New South Wales, Bobby has cared for the collection for 15 years and shared his family’s life story, along with the oral history of other cameleering families in Far West.

Bobby’s knowledge and willingness to share this history has significantly contributed to placing this story on the historic record and keeping it alive. Bobby’s knowledge is widely recognised and his name is often seen as a footnote in local and scholarly works on cameleering at Broken Hill and into other areas – including Bourke NSW and South Australia.

Garry White
Goulburn & District Historical & Genealogical Society Inc, known as History Goulburn
Garry White was born in Goulburn in 1935. His playground was the Wollondilly River and the grounds of Kenmore Mental Asylum. After leaving school he trained as an electrician, working for the New South Wales Railways until his retirement in 1996.

Gary has been a dedicated and passionate advocate for the preservation of Goulburn’s history for nearly 40 years. In 1982, he became a founding member of the Goulburn Family History Society. He has held voluntary roles in both the Goulburn & District Historical Society and the Goulburn & District Family History Society, which merged under his leadership in 2018 to become the Goulburn & District Historical & Genealogical Society Inc, known as History Goulburn.

Gary served as President of both societies until 2018 and still serves as a Committee Member at age 88. He has devoted four decades to the research of local history, sharing his knowledge with students, researchers, writers, documentary-makers, family historians, heritage consultants, archaeologists, architects, developers, and local Councils.

Roslyn ‘Roz’ Jones
Lawrence Museum
Roz was born in Norfolk, United Kingdom, and served in the Royal Navy as an air mechanic and photographer, prior to emigrating to Australia. After living and having busy career in Adelaide and Sydney, Jones moved to rural New South Wales.

She began volunteering at the Lawrence Museum in 2014, where she has been Vice President for the past 6 years. Her dynamic leadership oversaw the major redevelopment of the Lawrence Museum, including a new two-story wing and the redevelopment of the Museum’s original radio transmission building. In her time with the Museum, Roz has developed many valuable partnerships including a relationship with ABC Radio and championed the Museum as a community hub, winning a 2021 IMAGinE award for Innovation and Resilience.

Jones is dynamic, far sighted and tenacious at seeing the possibilities and projects that support the Museum and her local community.

Harlan Hall
Berrima District Historical and Family Society’s Museum

Harlan Hall has been involved with museum development for forty three years. He is a well-known local volunteer who previously worked for the Powerhouse Museum and the Sydney Maritime Museum. Since 2000, Harlan has been the Volunteer Project Manager of the Berrima District Historical and Family Society’s Museum, which has won four IMAGinE Awards.

Harlan has spent many years raising funds and building an Exhibition Hall attached to the Museum to showcase the lives of some of the Wingecarribee Shire’s early settlers. Completed in time for the Centenary of Anzac Day, the building houses the Southern Highlands 1200, a permanent exhibition dedicated to the men and women of the Southern Highlands who enlisted for the Great War.

Harlan has spent much of his life advancing and improving his local community. In 2015, Wingecarribee Shire Council named him their Australia Day Citizen of the Year, and in 2017 both Harlan and his wife Lynn received the Order of Australia Medial for their services to the village of Berrima. Harlan continues to volunteer despite living with severe Parkinson’s Disease.

Maureen Kingston
Dungog Historical Society and current President of AMaGA Hunter Chapter
Maureen Kingston has been a volunteer and a guiding force at the Dungog Museum since 1997. With a passion for history and heritage, she has worked tirelessly to bring new perspectives and ideas to the Museum.

Maureen has been involved in work across the organisation, including research, writing grant applications, and mounting displays. To assist with this work, she completed a Graduate Diploma in Local & Family History at the University of New England in the early 2000’s.

Since 2020, Maureen has served as President of the Hunter Chapter of AMaGA, where she is a strong advocate for increasing the Chapter’s reach and role in providing professional development opportunities to a largely community initiated membership.