FACETS

2025 Events

Guest Judge

Our Fairholme Open Art Prize | FACETS Art Exhibition Guest Judge for 2025 is Henri van Noordenberg, Project Officer: Regional Services for the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art.

Henri van Noordenburg is a Meanjin-based artist, curator and artsworker with cultural connections to Amersfoort, The Netherlands. He has a Visual Arts and a Creative Writing degree from Griffith University and a Master’s in Photography and Theatre at Queensland University of Technology.

In addition to his work at QAGOMA, Henri has worked as a lecturer in Photography at QUT, Visual Arts Coordinator at the Brisbane Powerhouse and a Board Member for Queensland Centre for Photography. 

For the last decade he has developed a new technique of hand carving inkjet prints a technique similar to the sgraffito process. This unique technique in combination with photography marked a significant change in his art practice. Furthermore, Henri has received numerous awards, including The Jeff Spann Award 2016, Australian Pacific LNG Award 2014 and the Clayton UTZ in 2012 and 2020 and selected in the top ten of emerging focus folio review at Photo LA 13 (Los Angeles, USA).

Guest Panelists

Artists-in-Conversation Guest Panelist - Aurora Elwell 

Aurora Elwell is an emerging ceramic artist working on Yuggera Ugarapul lands, creating sculptural vessels that explore her own identity. Elwell meditates on her emotions during the making process and translates unspoken thoughts into tangible objects. Her ongoing body of work, The Body Vessel, is an investigation of deep emotions such as desire, depression, self-consciousness and ego. 

Aurora graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Second Class Honours degree in 2023 (University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba).

Aurora teaches workshops and throwing courses at the Darling Downs Pottery Club, Toowoomba, as well as engaging with the clay community as cohost of Birds of Clay, an Australian ceramics focused podcast. Aurora is listed as a finalist in the North Queensland Ceramic Awards 2024 and received an honourable mention and exhibited in the Emerging World Stage exhibition at Clay Gulgong (2024), and most recently was selected as an exhibiting artist in Artisan's yearly exhibition, Unleashed (2024), which celebrates Queensland's promising early-career artist practitioners.



Artists-in-Conversation Guest Panelist - Ben Tupas

Ben Tupas is an artist, digital producer and educator based on Giabal, Jarowair and Western Wakka Wakka land (Toowoomba, Queensland). He is passionate about telling human stories with a strong sense of place.

Ben’s solo exhibitions Greetings From Eurasia (Crows Nest Gallery, 2022) and Mindanao Story Cycle (Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, 2018) explored personal ideas about Filipino identity and family history through video and audio installation.

In June 2024, over five years of collaboration with artist Lisa Clarke was exhibited in Observational Correspondence (Rosalie Gallery) featuring postcards that captured everyday vignettes from regional Australia.

Ben was the Artistic Director of LIT Festival: Stories in Light (2018-2020), a biennial night festival that shares local stories through site-specific light projection and light sculptures.

His work has been seen and heard in The Guardian, Australian Audio Guide and at the international lecture series Creative Mornings.

In 2016, Ben co-founded Story Artist Run Collective (storyARC) an artist-run initiative for regionally-based digital storytellers with theatre artist Dr Sarah Peters.

Previously, Ben worked as a digital producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's innovative regional storytelling project ABC Open.

Through the ABC Open role, he produced work for TV, radio and online. In addition, Ben travelled to regional communities across southern Queensland to deliver digital media workshops.

Facets | Live Portrait Artist

Ruben Fitton

Alana Wilkie

Leisa Clark

Deb Mostert

Donna Mitchell

Elena Churilova

Curator

Fairholme Open Art Prize is pleased to have Georgia Hayward as our 2025 FACETS Curator.

Georgia Hayward is an Meanjin-based artist, curator and artsworker with cultural connections to the Maranganji people in west QLD. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) and Bachelor of Business (Management) from the Queensland University of Technology.

Georgia has worked across several arts organisations, including the Caboolture Regional Art Gallery, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery and previously as the Exhibitions Coordinator at Outer Space. In addition to these roles, she has also curated several independent exhibitions and public programs.

Her practice explores the influence of public space on contemporary social dynamics and community development through social, spatial, and digital practices to engage with polyphonic and polycentric readings of public space - cultivating a collaborative approach to artmaking. 

Georgia along with the Fairholme Open Art Prize committee will select the exhibiting finalists for 2025. The Exhibition dates are 9-11 May 2025 at Fairholme College.

Guest Panelists

Artists-in-Conversation Guest Panelist - Tina Wilson

Tweed Regional Gallery Curator – Exhibitions. In relation to a recently curated exhibition, Tina Wilson states that, “There are many things in life that require us to traverse delicately. Whether it be social interactions, personal interactions or interactions with land and environment, we need to be constantly mindful of our actions now because of the lasting effects they can have in the future.”

Using this idea as a springboard for an exhibition of works drawn from the Tweed Regional Gallery collection, Wilson looks at our relationship with the environment through the lens of contemporary art. Bringing together work by Michael Cook, Rew Hanks, Penny Evans, Michael Kempson, Vernon Ah Kee and Victoria Reichelt, Wilson has positioned a large linocut panel by the Dhuwa artists of the Northern Territory at the exhibition entry, setting up a strong and immediate connection to the environment.

“This work illustrates how Aboriginal people lived in harmony with the land’s delicate ecosystems and responded to the natural flow of seasons,” Wilson explains. “As the exhibition continues, the works explore the devastating impact colonisation had on Aboriginal people and the environment – through introduced flora and fauna – and in particular, how this trauma continues for both Aboriginal people and the environment today.”



Artists-in-Conversation Guest Panelist - Kate Marek

Brisbane-based artist Kate Marek is known primarily for her stunning landscape paintings. Kate’s interest lies in colour: both its painterly application and its evocative power. A practicing artist for the past 20 years, Kate has a background education in visual arts, teaching and animation.

She has been the recipient of multiple awards, most recently winning the Facets Fairholme Art Prize (2023) and the open prize at the St Sebastian’s Art Exhibition (2022).

She was selected for the National Emerging Art Prize ACB Selects exhibition (2023) and was a finalist in the Revival Art & Design Gallery's Emerging Artist Prize. Kate was short listed in last year’s Lethbridge 20000 and Lethbridge Landscape prizes as well as the Harden Art Prize. Her work is held in private collections throughout Australia.



Facets | Portrait Competition - Guest Sitter - Sandy Pottinger

Artist, Arts Writer, University Visual Art Lecturer & Fairholme Alumnus (Head Day Girl)

Over the past three decades Sandy Pottinger has become a legendary figure among artists in the Darling Downs region. A graduate and Head Day Girl of Fairholme College in 1964, she attended art school in Brisbane, and worked as a photographer in Sydney after completing her post-graduate studies. Pottinger was drawn back to Toowoomba and taught in the Arts faculty at University of Southern Queensland for 30 years.

Pottinger has become noted for helping emerging artists refine their talents. She is an eagerly-read columnist for The Chronicle’s ‘Around the Galleries’ and accompanying that she has opened hundreds of exhibitions in a wide range of mediums.