http://www.deakin.edu.au/art-collection/

Deakin Art Gallery, Deakin University Art Gallery, Building FA, Burwood Campus, Melbourne (2026)

02/09/2026

Congratulations to Kat Parker who has won the 2026 Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award, with a delicately constructed life-sized paper sculpture of the now extinct Northern Pig-Footed Bandicoot, called “Discarded”.

Selected from 43 finalists, Kat Parker was named winner of the annual $15,000 prize by Caretaker Vice-Chancellor, Deakin Distinguished Professor Matthew Clarke, at a ceremony held at the University’s Art Gallery on 2 September.

Judges awarded the acquisitive first prize, supported by Michael and Emily Tong, to Parker’s work which they described as unique, conceptually focused and highly resolved. Created by layering linocut prints on secondhand book pages, the artwork memorialises and informs. The Northern Pig-Footed Bandicoot is one of only two marsupial species (both extinct) to evolve hoof-like feet and was lost due to habitat destruction and predation by foxes and cats.

Senior Manager of the Deakin University Art Gallery, Leanne Willis, was joined on the judging panel by Amy Barclay, from the City of Melbourne Public Art Team, and Kent Morris, Barkindji artist and curator.

Also announced on the same evening, Daniel Agdag was awarded the $3000 Highly Commended Award supported by UniSuper for his work The Frequency and the inaugural $5000 Emerging Sculptors Award was awarded to Lucie Billingsley for Spores in Moonlight.

The winning sculptures as well as the finalist works are on display at the Deakin University Art Gallery until 9 October where visitors will be able to vote for the $3000 People’s Choice Award that will be announced after the exhibition closes.

Congratulations to our winners

Image: The winning work by Kat Parker, “Discarded”, photographer Fiona Hamilton.

23/08/2026

How wonderful to welcome over 800 people through the Gallery today during the Deakin University Open Day at Burwood. The Art Gallery was open Sunday 23 August from 9.30 am to 3 pm for a special preview of the Deakin University Contemporary
Small Sculpture Award.

A wonderful day on campus

Deakin University

06/08/2026

MUST CLOSE TOMORROW ‘দাদার খোঁজে – Finding Dada’ featuring works by Anindita Banerjee - closing Friday 7 August.

Banerjee takes portraits of significant men in her life in whom she sees echoes of her dada (grandfather) and overlays them with intricate patterns. As she says, ‘I’ve always used alpona as a metaphor for my identity in practice. And an alpona is a rice flour drawing from West Bengal where I grew up.’

While creating these designs Banerjee contemplates her subjects, slowly building the motif line by line. The practice gives her time to reflect on their relationship and build a design that suits the connection they share. The process itself is as important as the resulting beautiful pattern that radiates from her subject.

Learn more about Banerjee’s practice in our video interview with the artist. LINK IN BIO.

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
OPEN: 10am – 4pm Monday – Friday (closed public holidays).
LOCATION: Building FA, Deakin University Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, 3125.
One-hour free parking located along the ovals in close walking distance to the gallery.

Install image of ‘দাদার খোঁজে – Finding Dada’ at the Deakin University Art Gallery, May 2026. Photo by Fiona Hamilton.
Artworks: Anindita Banerjee, ‘Pratish Da, 2016’, ‘Dadabhai, 2022’, ‘Manu, 1977’, and ‘Dada, 1957 #1’, 2026, digital prints with drawing; inkjet print on Ilford cotton rag paper and wax. © the artist.

Anindita Banerjee Ray

31/07/2026

FINAL WEEK of the exhibition ‘দাদার খোঁজে – Finding Dada’ featuring works by Anindita Banerjee, closing Friday 7 August.

The four central banners in the exhibition feature photographs spanning four generations of men in Banerjee’s life: her grandfather, father, husband and son. She has overlaid these portraits with wax drawings based on alpona, a rice flour drawing practice she learnt growing up in West Bengal.

Speaking on this she says: ‘The way I use alpona in my photographs is usually digitally putting them in after I’ve worked on the photographs. But in this one I wanted to have something tangible on it, a physical hands-on kind of experience. And that was when I was also reading about batik in Shantiniketan. So what I did was I actually went back to Shantiniketan in Kolkata… a university town and craft village about one and half hours away from Kolkata. And why I wanted to learn batik at Shantiniketan, and not anywhere else, is because the Shantiniketan batik is based on alpona. And alpona is such an intrinsic part of my practice. Pairing it back to the authentic use of batik on fabric makes sense. So that’s why I made four central works in this exhibition.’

Learn more about Banerjee’s practice in our video interview with the artist. LINK IN BIO.

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
OPEN: 10am – 4pm Monday – Friday (closed public holidays).
LOCATION: Building FA, Deakin University Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, 3125.
One-hour free parking located along the ovals in close walking distance to the gallery.

Image caption: Install image of ‘দাদার খোঁজে – Finding Dada’ now open at the Deakin University Art Gallery, May 2026. Photo by Fiona Hamilton.
Artworks: Anindita Banerjee, ‘Dada, 1957 #2’, ‘Manu, 2012’ , and ‘Ishaan, 2025 #3’, 2026, digital prints with batik; modal muslin, wax and dye in a steel trough. © the artist.

17/07/2026

We are pleased to announce the list of finalists for the 2026 Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award.

Congratulations to our finalists!

This is the 17th year of the award and we received 670 entries from which the 43 finalists were selected.

Thank you to our external judges Amy Barclay, Public Art Project Lead, City of Melbourne, and Kent Morris, Barkindji artist, curator, and Creative Director of The Torch, with Leanne Willis, Senior Manager, Art Collection and Galleries, representing Deakin. Full judge biographies will be available on our website in the coming weeks.

If you were not chosen, thank you for your entry and we do hope you consider entering again next year.

The exhibition will be held at the Deakin University Art Gallery and open to the public from Monday 24 August 2026.

Again, congratulations to all finalists on your selection.

10/07/2026

As we celebrate NAIDOC Week (5 – 12 July 2026) we would like to share with you the etching ‘Women’s Journey’ (2010) by Yoolongteeyt Dr Vicki Couzens, a Kirrae Wurrong and Gunditjmara woman and a leading contemporary artist from the Western District of Victoria. Couzens uses her practice to express and sustain cultural knowledge, language, ceremony and teaching. She is widely recognised for her significant role in the revival of possum skin cloak making in Victoria, developed in collaboration with artists Lee Darroch (Yorta Yorta, Mutti Mutti and Boonwurrung) and Treahna Hamm (Yorta Yorta). This wonderful etching is just a small part of her much larger practice as an artist and community leader.

‘I do create artworks like paintings and printmaking, and even public art, but it’s the purpose, intent and the story that is behind the artworks or the creative expression. In our culture—story, painting, song, dance, they’re all part of the same story and one can’t be without the other. Even though you might see a painting and you’ve got a little label and a story, it’s only part of the expression of that story. It’s also a form of documenting for the future and ways of sharing.’ (1)

You can see this work and others in in the Deakin University Art Gallery’s Virtual Exhibition Space, showcasing a works by First Nations Women from South-Eastern Australia. Featuring 14 artist including Maree Clarke, Hayley Millar Baker, Vicki Couzens, Marlene Gilson, Deanne Gilson and Lisa Waup, the exhibition celebrates and highlights the strength, resilience and cultural knowledge embedded within contemporary First Nations art practice.

(1) Vicki Couzens interviewed by Tiarney Miekus, ‘Vicki Couzens: “Art is a part of life”’, Art Guide, 30 June 2023

Image: Vicki Couzens, ‘Women’s Journey’, 2010, etching, Purchase 2011, Deakin University Art Collection © courtesy of the artist.

26/06/2026

Continuing this week in the Deakin University Art Gallery is ‘দাদার খোঁজে Finding Dada’ featuring the work of artist and Deakin Alumna, Anindita Banerjee.

People come to the visual arts through many different paths. Banerjee left a career in IT and HR to study creative arts at Deakin University. She first completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Creative Arts at Deakin in 2016 and followed by a PhD in 2021. She is now an accomplished multidisciplinary artist and committed arts worker living on the lands of the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation (Ballarat, Victoria). Last year, Banerjee’s contributions to the larger Victorian arts community were recognised with the Arts Award in the Victorian Multicultural Awards for Excellence 2025.

The exhibition continues until Friday 7 August

Please visit deakin.edu.au/art-collection/ for more details.

Deakin University Art Gallery
FREE ENTRY
OPEN: Monday – Friday 10am – 4pm (closed public holidays).
LOCATION: Building FA, Deakin University Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, 3125.
There is free one hour parking along the ovals in close walking distance to the gallery.

Image Caption
Install photograph of দাদার খোঁজে Finding Dada, Anindita Banerjee’s exhibition at Deakin University Art Gallery, Burwood, 2026. Artwork © courtesy of the artist. Photo by Fiona Hamilton.

Anindita Banerjee Ray

19/06/2026

Continuing this week in the Deakin University Art Gallery is ‘দাদার খোঁজে Finding Dada’ featuring the work of artist and Deakin graduate, Anindita Banerjee.

Anindita Banerjee is an interdisciplinary artist and “twice uprooted passenger seat migrant” living on the lands of the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation (Ballarat, Victoria). Her work interrogates ideas of cultural otherness, authentic identity, and the sense of home. This exhibition features photographic portraits of male figures in her life, including from the Indigenous community, in whom she finds reflections of her Dada’s (grandfather’s) facial features. She overlays these portraits with patterns reconstructed from memories of ritualistic ceremonies and mark-making. While creating these gestural hybrid rituals, she wonders where her place is as an immigrant to the unceded lands of present-day Australia.

Learn more about this deeply personal exhibition through her own words, in a video on our YouTube playlist where she talks about the exhibition and the works on display. Follow the link here to watch the video https://youtu.be/yLxczffzBbc?si=s2DCyVKh3CC5or-6

Please visit deakin.edu.au/art-collection/ for more details.

Deakin University Art Gallery
FREE ENTRY
OPEN: Monday – Friday 10am – 4pm (closed public holidays).
LOCATION: Building FA, Deakin University Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, 3125.
There is free one hour parking along the ovals in close walking distance to the gallery.
The exhibition continues until Friday 7 August

Image Caption: Anindita Banerjee pictured in the filming of her video with Curator Kira Godoroja-Prieckaerts and filmmaker Ben Gurvich from Benzen Video. Photograph Tabitha Davies.
Artwork © courtesy of the artist

Anindita Banerjee Ray
Deakin University - Arts & Ed
Deakin University
Benzen Video Productions

12/06/2026

Continuing this week in the Deakin University Art Gallery is ‘দাদার খোঁজে Finding Dada’ featuring the work of artist and Deakin graduate, Anindita Banerjee.

People come to the visual arts through many different paths. Banerjee left a career in IT and HR, then completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Creative Arts at Deakin in 2016 and a PhD at Deakin in 2021.

Born in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) Banerjee describes herself as a ‘twice uprooted passenger seat migrant’, moving first to the United States of America and relocating to Australia in 2010. Having never intended to leave her homeland, she grapples with a life that is split across places as she finds and creates a new space for her own experience. Her work interrogates ideas of cultural otherness, authentic identity, and belonging.

For this new body of work, Banerjee combed through the archives of her life to select photographs of significant men in whom she finds reflections of her Dada’s (grandfather’s) facial features. They include family, mentors, friends and cultural leaders across different aspects of her life and communities, including Indigenous Australasian peoples. She overlays their portraits with ritualistic mark-making inspired by memories of the Bengali ceremonies that she has practiced throughout her life. In her reconstructions of these rituals, she layers memories of peoples, cultures, generations and places; searching for a sense of home and self.

The exhibition continues until Friday 7 August

Please visit deakin.edu.au/art-collection/ for more details.

Deakin University Art Gallery
FREE ENTRY
OPEN: Monday – Friday 10am – 4pm (closed public holidays).
LOCATION: Building FA, Deakin University Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, 3125.
There is free one hour parking along the ovals in close walking distance to the gallery.

Image caption: Anindita Banerjee, ‘Manu 1977’, 2026, digital print with drawing. Image and © courtesy of the artist

05/06/2026

Entries close at Midnight AEST Friday 5 June 2026 … 12 hours left to enter this year’s Award

Do not miss out enter now

The Art Collection and Galleries office closes at 5 pm today - entries will still be accepted until midnight AEST today but we strongly suggest you enter before 5 pm in case you need assistance.

Full details are in our biography with a link to the entry form. Refer to previous posts for more details.

The Deakin University Contemporary Award is organised by the Art Collection and Galleries Unit at Deakin University, Victoria Australia.

Deakin Art Gallery

02/09/2026

23/08/2026

06/08/2026

31/07/2026

17/07/2026

10/07/2026

26/06/2026

19/06/2026

12/06/2026

05/06/2026

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