We are delighted to announce the winners of the inaugural DDCA Awards. Congratulations go to the following individuals whose work stood out to our judges.
Distinguished Australian First Nations Creative Leadership Award
Winner: WARRABA WEATHERALL (Griffith University)
Warraba Weatherall is a Kamilaroi visual artist, Lecturer at Griffith University and PhD candidate, who is currently based in Meanjin (Brisbane). Warraba’s artistic practice has a specific interest in archival repositories and structures, and the life of
cultural materials and knowledges within these environments. Warraba is also a lecturer for the Contemporary Australian Indigenous Arts (CAIA) degree at Griffith University’s, Queensland College of Art. Warraba is passionate about shifting cultural norms within the Australian visual arts sector and contributes to the sector through artistic practice, education and curation.
JUDGES COMMENTS With truth-telling at the heart of your teaching and in your creative practice Warraba your work deeply nourishes. It honours the elders through continuance of cultural practice in the transmission of Indigenous Knowledge and spirit in ways accessible to community and kin, but it also offers the wisdom of your country and ancestors gently, in ways accessible to wider national and international audiences. Your teaching practice, and community engagement are centred in truth-telling as a peace-making and as a powerful force close to country, which does much to redress the constraints of colonial privilege by which First Nations people’s stories have been omitted. The subtlety of your practice belies its power, the approachable structure of the training you have designed shatters the ignorance that pervades these spaces. -PROFESSOR KATHRYN GILBEY (Judge) with DR JUDE LOVELL (Moderator)
Distinguished Innovation in Creative Arts Award
Winner: GUY KEULEMANS (University of South Australia)
Dr Guy Keulemans is an Enterprise Fellow at the University of South Australia researching repair, reuse and sustainable design. An artist and designer, he exhibits internationally and has works acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia. His current research is funded through the Australian Research Council Linkage Project in partnership with Australian Design Centre and JamFactory.
JUDGES COMMENTS Congratulations, Guy, on this significant body of work. Your application not only met all the criteria but also excelled in each area. Works of Transformative Repair and Bioregional Design is conceptually robust, accessible, and centres on the creation, presentation, and repair of objects, as well as the creative practice itself. The project’s wide-ranging and diverse partnerships reveal a strong desire from various stakeholders to engage in this initiative, which addresses timely and relevant concerns about global resource management and over-consumption. The project’s message is impactful, the practice is solid, and the avenues for sharing are varied. Your leadership has united an impressive group of collaborators who are true co-researchers on this journey. This project’s core research question seems to have evolved from a personal inquiry into one of shared importance. The short documentary videos, creatively inspired by popular TV reveal shows, are a joy to watch, honoring each co-researcher’s voice with authenticity and openness. This is a highly commendable research initiative that places creative practice at its core, fostering the creation of joyful, thoughtful, and sustainable objects. It not only advances knowledge but also proposes models for new, adaptive ways of living in a rapidly changing world. -DR SIMON SPAIN
Distinguished Creative Teaching Award
Winner: NIKLAVS RUBENIS (University of Tasmania)
Niklavs Rubenis is a designer/maker interested in the intersection of craft, design, ethics, waste, and people with a specific focus on repair (objects, systems, communities). He has been involved with diverse projects spanning community, non-profit, commercial, and cultural institutions, and has had work presented, exhibited, and published nationally and internationally. He is currently coordinator of design and coordinator of object + furniture at the School of Creative Arts & Media, University of Tasmania.
JUDGES COMMENTS This studio course provided students the opportunity to engage with real-world sustainability issues, through an exploration of circular design with a focus on international footwear company Blundstone. By sharing the environmentally sustainable difficulties a company like this faces, students were encouraged to push the boundaries with blue sky thinking, that seemingly inspired the Blundstone workers as well. There is clear evidence of all stakeholders – teaching staff, students, industry partners – gaining from the project. More than just about the creative making and access to machinery and expertise, the pitching, writing, verifying and planning seemed to rank just as highly in the very positive student evaluations. The panel appreciated the mutiple stakholders, the teamwork, and the demonstrative transformation in both students and industry. -PROF VANESSA TOMLINSON
Distinguished Creative Researcher Award
Winner: JOSHUA ZEUNERT (University of New South Wales)
Dr Joshua Zeunert’s creative practice explores the dynamics between human activities, anthropogenic impacts, and landscape scale change over time. His visual and multimedia work demonstrates a deep care for the more-than-human world. He has significantly contributed to his field through explorations of food and landscape systems, foregrounding agriculture’s central role in remaking ecologies. His ‘Food | Landscapes Australia’ web archive has received five international awards. Josh has exhibited, curated and widely published, including at the internationally esteemed 2023 Venice Biennial, nationally at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and Australian arts icon Bundanon.
JUDGES COMMENTS Joshua Zeunert’s art practice explores the dynamics between human activities, anthropogenic impacts, and landscape scale change over time. His visual and multimedia work demonstrates is a deep care for the more-than-human world. He has contributed significantly to the field through his exploration of food, agricultural and landscape systems, acknowledging agriculture’s central role in making and remaking ecologies. He has exhibited, curated and widely published, including the esteemed international 2023 Venice Biennial, nationally at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and Bundanon. One of his creative outputs has received five international awards. -PROFESSOR MIA LINDGREN
Distinguished Creative Arts Doctoral Student Award
Winner: ANNE CASEY (University of Technology Sydney)
Anne Casey is a poet, essayist, academic and author of five poetry collections. Her work is widely published internationally – The Irish Times, The London Magazine, Rattle, American Writers Review, Nimrod, Australian Poetry Anthology and The Canberra Times among others. Her recent awards include the American Writers Review Prize, Henry Lawson Prize for Poetry and American Association of Australasian Literary Studies Poetry Prize. She has a PhD in creative practice from the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches creative writing. Her doctoral research explored ‘The second-wave impact in Australia of the Great Irish Famine: Reviving lost histories through poetics of resistance’.
JUDGES COMMENTS Anne Casey doctoral work investigates how practice-based inquiry centring on poetics of resistance can inform our understanding of, and help us to reclaim, lost histories. The creative components of the work comprises the poetry collection ‘Seang (Hungering)’ which despite challenges of working from incomplete and missing archival materials, Anne has carefully and ethically told important stories of Irish women living complex lives in 19th century Australia. In telling these stories, Anne has accomplished remarkable achievements in balancing the limits of archival knowledge with the imperative to humanise and dramatise singular human struggles. -PROFESSOR MIA LINDGREN, A/PROFESSOR BEATA BATOROWICZ, PROFESSOR VANESSA TOMLINSON
All the winners will receive AUD$1,000.
Thank you to all applicants across the five awards. We were thrilled to see the high calibre of submissions across all categories. Our thanks also go to our judges – Beata Batorowicz, Mia Lindgren, Vanessa Tomlinson, Kathryn Gilbey & Simon Spain – who had the difficult job of choosing the winners.
The DDCA wishes to acknowledge leaders of the Faculties, Schools and Departments who supported all of this year’s submissions. We will be back with another DDCA Awards in 2025!