the churchie emerging art prize

Chrystal Rimmer’s practice explores the confluence of nature, trash, and
entropy. Rimmer’s practice draws on speculative narratives of future geologies
and ecosystems, investigating the ways in which waste and detritus function as
symbols of resilience. Through the poetic use of ‘waste’ materials, Rimmer
challenges traditional notions of object and subject, dissolving nostalgic
ideologies to contemplate a more inclusive understanding of nature. Rimmer
completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at The National Art School, Sydney in 2015
and was awarded the Aboriginal Internship Residency Program.

On graduation of her Master of Fine Arts in 2019, Rimmer was awarded the
prestigious Lift Off Award which fully funded two international residencies
including Miet AIR in Beers, The Netherlands where she continued her study
of plastic waste and explored the material properties of recycled aluminium.
In addition, she participated in a research residency with Sail Britain across the
remote Western Isles of Scotland collecting data and collaborating with
academics on the effects of micro plastics in bodies of water.

Chun Yin Rainbow Chan (陳雋然) is an interdisciplinary artist, singer and music
producer based in Naarm (Melbourne). Her work bridges contemporary visual
art with a background in popular music, exploring themes of cultural
representation, creative (mis)translation and matrilineal histories. Chan creates
immersive installations that combine silk paintings, traditional weaving, sound
and performance. Central to her recent projects is the revitalisation of women’s
folk songs from the Weitou people, Hong Kong’s original settlers.

Reflecting her deep ancestral ties to Weitou women, Chan’s works contemplate
the connection between memory, love and loss. She has exhibited nationally
and internationally at the 8th Yokohama Triennale, Cement Fondu, FELTspace,
Blindside, Firstdraft, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, I-Project Space
(Beijing) and is currently part of ‘Primavera 2024’ at the MCA.

Claire Ellis is a Canadian-born ceramic artist based in Naarm (Melbourne).
Influenced by her former career as a chef, her practice is informed by a focus on
local existing resources and deep experimentation. In 2022 her work won the
innovation award at the Warrandyte Pottery Expo and was a finalist in several
environmental art and design prizes. Her work has been exhibited
internationally and has been published in magazines, journals and books.
An invited guest speaker at several events, Claire is passionate about climate
justice and aims to create opportunities for catharsis and political change
through her work.

Edwina McLennan (b. 1990) is a Brisbane based visual artist working with mixed
media, textiles, painting, installation and soft sculpture. Her practice is positioned
at the intersection of textiles, painting, consumerism, and digital culture.

Originally trained in fashion design at the Royal Academy of Antwerp,
McLennan deconstructs imagery of mass consumption, sourced largely
from fashion magazines. Employing a combination of handmade, mechanical,
and digital processes, her works take the form of reconstructed Surrealist
landscapes, occupying a liminal space between the natural and digital
worlds and serving as a commentary on the impact of consumerism upon
identity construction.

Edwina McLennan is represented by The Renshaws’ gallery in Brisbane and
occupies an art studio at STEAMM Studios. McLennan has a Bachelor of Visual
Art (Honours) from the Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith
University. Her work has been acquired by Artbank and is held in personal
collections both nationally and internationally.

McLennan has participated in solo exhibitions at the Melbourne Art Fair (2024),
Fish Lane Window Vitrines (2023, Brisbane), The Renshaws (2022, Brisbane),
Outer Space (2022, Brisbane), and selected group exhibitions include Sit Back
Relax and Enjoy the Apocolypse (2022, La Vallee, Belgium), Stayless (2022, POP
Gallery, Brisbane) and Variations on Tape (2021, POP Gallery, Brisbane).

Joel Arthur responds to urban parks in his practice, countering problematic
landscape traditions. This year, THIS IS NO FANTASY (VIC) held Arthur’s first
solo exhibition as his representing gallery. In 2024, he was also selected as a
finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (NSW), Len Fox Painting Award (VIC),
Mosman Art Prize (NSW), Waverley Art Prize (NSW), and the Bayside Painting
Prize (VIC). Arthur graduated from ANU School of Art and Design with a
Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) in 2014 and is undertaking a Master of Fine
Arts by Research at UNSW School of Art and Design.

Josie Alexandra is an experimental trans-disciplinary artist currently based in
London. They are the founder and director of Aeaea Studios, whose artistic
projects strive to generate narratives of complexity and multidimensionality:
informed by their fascination with relationality as sites for reclamation and
transformation within world-making processes during our civilisational crisis’.
‘Compass in Hand’ is the first of seven moving-image works in their durational
project ‘Considered Dialogues’. 2024 projects include: ’POWER IN FLUIDITY’
a group exhibition which they co-produced and co-curated with Bold Mellon
Collective in partnership with Finsbury Park Picturehouse.

Josina Pumani is a Pitjantjatjara woman, who was born in Mimili on the APY
Lands in South Australia. Her mother, the late Ngupulya Pumani and her
grandmother Kunmanara (Milatjari) Pumani were two of the founders of Mimili
Maku Arts. Both women taught Josina much about cultural leadership, but also
about the strong connection with their Country of Antara.

Josina began painting in 2009 at Mimili Maku Arts and in 2023 she relocated to
Adelaide and now works out of the Collective Art Centre. Josina began working
with clay in 2024 and was awarded the Emerging Artists Prize at the 2024
NATSIAAs for her work Maralinga.

Marion Abraham is a painter living and working in lutruwita (Tasmania)
who investigates inner workings of the self. Embracing a fiercely tangible
approach to the medium, Abraham infuses traditional painting techniques
with subversive qualities to execute dynamic compositions of the body
in the landscape.

Guided by feminist instinct and a dark sense of humour, her paintings meld
romantic and escapist notions, familiar clichés and art historical references
with the muddiness of the natural world.

Parallel to these themes, the artist’s practice also operates as a rebuttal to
seductive feelings of despair and the mysterious longing she feels between
her family’s Lebanese lineage and birthplace in rural Australia. These
underlying tensions lead her works from lightness into darkness, then back
again, navigating ideas of the soul, reimagining power structures and centring
the valorising of care.

As a Yuwaalaraay, Gamillaraay and Koama multi-disciplinary artist, poet and
jeweller, storytelling is an important part of Melissa Stannard’s cultural heritage.
As an avid researcher, the subject matters Stannard explores are often
confronting, however her aim is to balance truth telling, educating with empathy,
with finding poetic healing for herself and her community. Recurring themes in
Stannard’s practice are identity/belonging, memory/trauma, but ultimately
resilience and survival. Stannard graduated from CAIA in 2019, with a Bachelor
of Fine Arts and First class Honours in 2023, and was awarded the University
Medal for academic excellence and Best in Show Industry award. In 2024
Stannard was selected for PICA’s Hatched National Graduate Exhibition.

Ming is a lens-based artist and PhD candidate at the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology. Ming’s practice draws upon his lived experience as a
first-generation Chinese- Australian to examine the immigrant identity in
contemporary Australia. Ming employs a novel methodology integrating
autoethnography and lens-based practices, to create video essays that
reflect upon his hybrid identity within contemporary and historical
Australian contexts.

By accentuating the paradoxes between lived and prescribed sociocultural
realities, Ming’s work offers a hybrid perspective, advocating for a deeper
understanding that transcends cultural, social and political barriers.

Ming holds a Master of Fine Art from the Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology. He has exhibited in Australia since 2022, including at Blindside
ARI, MARS Gallery, Melbourne Design Week, Testing Grounds, Kings
Artist-Run, Felt Space, and Run Artist-Run.

He has been recognised with several awards, including first prize in the
fortyfivedownstairs Emerging Artist Award, Footscray Art Prize (finalist),
Incinerator Art Award (finalist), and NAVA Ignition Prize.

Ming completed a residency at the Centre for Contemporary Photography
in 2024 and is currently an ACMI-X creative resident at the Australian
Centre for the Moving Image.

Nicholas Smith is a visual artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). His work
investigates sexuality, queer identity and memory. Ceramics form the basis of
his practice and are augmented with painting and sculptural elements fashioned
from found materials. His materially rich assemblages weave references to
personal aesthetic and material inheritances, including the interiors and decor
of regional suburban homes, symbolism and imagery associated with the Roman
Catholic Church, crafts that have been passed down by maternal family
members, along with twentieth century décor and artistic lineages.

In 2022 Smith graduated with a Master of Fine Art from ArtCenter College
of Design, Los Angeles. His works have been included in major exhibitions
including Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions, Australian
Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The National 4: Australian Art Now,
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2023); and Queer: Stories
from the NGV Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2022).
In 2019 he was awarded the American Friends of the National Gallery of
Australia AusArt Fellowship in support of his education in California. His work
is held in the National Gallery of Victoria’s collection. He is represented by
Haydens Gallery, Melbourne, Australia.

Nick Breedon’s practice works references from pop culture, and art history
through meta narratives about desire and alienation, incorporating lived
experience, personal narrative and dark humour. Nick incorporates a vast array
of material processes and making techniques from the western canon of
sculpture; craft, painting, textiles and video to make ritual-like objects, with
extreme attention to detail.

Prita Tina Yeganeh is an artist, facilitator, and educator of Iranian ancestry.
Growing up in India and Australia, she draws on lived experience as a refugee
and migrant-settler to explore personal, relational, collective, and systemic
repair, healing, and transformation. Through research-based experiments with
family and community, Yeganeh reactivates Iranian Indigenous principles,
uncovering new coordinates for belonging and tools for place-making,
community-building, acts of reciprocity, and cultural transmission on stolen land.
Her work combines engineering expertise with practice-based research in
heritage artisan crafts to create immersive, sensorial forms spanning colour,
pattern, scent, light, organic materials, and spatial considerations.

Samantha Dennis is a visual artist working in lutruwita (Tasmania). Sam is
fascinated by the ways society has sought to explain and order the phenomena
of life. Her work navigates themes from natural history and the material
qualities of fine crafts, such as goldsmithing and ceramics, to reflect on the
relationship between people and nature, with a particular interest in how we
conceive animals that are often considered unrelatable, undesirable, unfamiliar.
Sam’s practice has been supported by a range of project funding through the
Regional Arts Fund, Australia Council for the Arts, and Arts Tasmania.
Currently, Sam is in the final stages of a PhD project with UTas.

Shannon O’Hara is a Brisbane-based artist exploring contemporary
abstraction and its relationship to materiality, textiles and the body. Producing
often large-scale hard-edge abstract paintings that use satin rather than canvas
as the support, O’Hara considers how an emphasis on the sensuous textile and
tactile material surface can facilitate an embodied visual experience.

Engaged in an ongoing conversation about abstraction’s relevance and evolution,
O’Hara investigates how textile materiality can offer alternative sensorial
viewing experiences unfamiliar to the hard-edge painting genre.

Her paintings aim to create a conversation between a decorative methodology,
abstraction and the body, where satin is adorned with paint and bodily shapes
remind the viewer of flesh.

Sid Pattni (b. 1986) is an Australian artist of Indian descent who unpacks the
intricacies of identity, culture, and belonging within a post-colonial framework.
Working primarily in painting and textiles, Sid aims to contribute to the ongoing
discourse surrounding art and its role in communicating the complexities of
diasporic identity.

He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Emerging
Exploration Exhibition (2024), Nadiya (2023), All The Rage (2023), and held
several solo exhibitions. He was awarded the Kennedy Prize (2023), Flinders
Lane Gallery Exploration Award (2024), Khōj Cross-Hatchings Residency,
New Delhi (2024), and was the recipient of the Minderoo Artist Fund Grant
(2022). Sid was invited to speak at TEDx in 2021. His work is held in private
collections across Australia.