2025
The Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025 celebrates the diversity and strength of Australian textile art. In its ninth iteration in 2025, the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award was initially established to mark Wangaratta's long and prominent history of textile manufacturing and craft making. In furthering this unique tradition and social history the award celebrates and strengthens the development of contemporary textile practice in Australia.
Winner
Jemima Wyman has been awarded the prestigious Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025 for her work, Haze 19, 2024.
The work, a custom-printed Chiffon curtain spanning over 6 metres in length, forms part of a series of ‘Haze’ curtains which, according to the artist, function as ideological textiles. Coined by Wyman, this is a term for textiles that carry political ideas in their fibres, like soviet era propaganda textiles, war rugs, military camouflage and protest attire. At the same time, they’re decorative, deceptive and tactical devices for conflict.
The winning work, Haze 19 is derived from Wyman’s hand-cut photographic ’Haze’ collages, which weave together smoke clouds that occur during global protests. According to the artist “the titles for each work in the ‘Haze’ series list archival details about each individual piece of smoke: the colour, protest, place and date. For Haze 19 the unabridged title is 5074 words long.”
While the artist considers protest smoke as a cloud to be contemplated she also notes: “It’s a warning sign of past, present and future discontent, yet also an empowering reminder of collective resilience and hope for change, illuminating the biosphere we inhabit today.”
Jemima Wyman is a Palawa artist living and working between Australia and Los Angeles. Her practice explores patterns, masking, and camouflage as visual strategies of resistance and tools for negotiating identity. Since 1996, she has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally since 2004. Recent solo shows include Sullivan + Strumpf (Sydney and Melbourne), Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles), and Milani Gallery (Brisbane). Wyman has participated in major group exhibitions worldwide, including the Whitney Museum, Hauser & Wirth, and ZKM. Her work is held in prominent collections such as the Whitney Museum, National Gallery of Australia, and the 21st Century Museum of Art, Japan.
Judging the $40,000 acquisitive award in 2025 was Dr Blair French, an accomplished arts leader, curator and writer originally from Aotearoa New Zealand and current CEO of the Murray Arts Museum Albury. In choosing the winner French noted:
“Jemima Wyman’s Haze 19, 2024, is an immediately arresting work, an explosion of colour and pattern billowing across the gallery space. Created from hand-collaged photographic work then printed onto chiffon drops creating a large, free-hanging curtain, Haze 19 is a visual accumulation of clouds of smoke generated at protests around the globe – political protests, social justice protests, human rights protests, environmental protests. The work conveys the fury, the energy and the interconnectedness of the contemporary world through a form with associations to various histories of textile print – fashion (clothing as both display and disguise), interior design, public proclamation. Simultaneously seductive and subversive Haze 19 is a standout work within an exhibition of outstanding contemporary textile art.”
Dr French also remarked upon the high quality of all the works included in the 2025 exhibition:
"The Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025 exhibition features ten substantial works created by artists at different career stages engaging with a wide range of processes. It makes for a rich and deeply thought-provoking viewing experience and highlights how textile practices offer contemporary artists unique means to hinge together material making and conceptual speculation, personal and collective experience, human touch and technological production."
Highly Commended
The Highly Commended Ruth Amery Award was awarded to Elisa Jane Carmichael for her work, Mirrigimpa, 2024.
Handstitched and dyed with mangrove bark and eucalyptus leaves, Mirrigimpa, 2024 depicts the sea eagle, an animal of great significance to Quandamooka people, providing knowledge of sustainable and communal hunting and fishing practices and embodying Ancestral cultural practices. Mirrigimpa sings with the changing tides, signalling when the mullet are coming and carries spiritual and cultural connections to sea and sky Country.
The work incorporates mullet fishscales, string, Talwalpin nets and scent from eucalyptus, banksia, casuarina and melaleuca leaves. The inner bark fibre of Talwalpin (cotton tree), used for millennia to make for nets and baskets, has been stripped and woven into string. Together the materials and methods of Mirrigimpa carry the scent and memories of Country while imagining Mirrigimpa’s vision, soaring across Quandamooka waters.
Elisa Jane Carmichael is a Ngugi woman belonging to the Quandamooka People of Moreton Island/Mulgumpin and North Stradbroke Island/Minjerribah, Queensland. Her practice draws on Ancestral knowledge, matrilineal connections, memories of place and relationships with Country. She is passionate about shining a light on the cultural brilliance of her Ancestors so that these stories can be kept alive for future generations.
Carmichael’s work is held in private and public collections across Australia, including The British Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia, University of Queensland Art Museum, Griffith University Art Museum, QUT Art Museum, Queensland Museum, and Bendigo Art Gallery.
Catalogue
A beautiful catalogue featuring the year's finalist works is available for purchase at the gallery and features an essay by Hannah Presley, Senior Curator, Art Museums, University of Melbourne.
Education Resource
An online education resourceis available to accompany the award. The resource includes a series of activities designed to engage educators and their students in thinking and talking about contemporary textile practice in Australia. The resource is an introduction into part of the Wangaratta Art Gallery’s collection with particular focus on textiles that have been informed acquisitions through the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award since 2009 and Wangaratta’s social history. The resource is available here: Wangaratta-Contemporary-Textile-Award-Education-Resource.pdf(PDF, 8MB)
For further information on the 2025 exhibition, visit the exhibition page.
Jemima Wyman, Haze 19, 2024, (unabridged title 5074 words see www.jemimawyman.com/titles), custom-printed Chiffon (100% polyester with 100% polyester thread), 401 x 629.9cm. Winner of the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025. Installation view, Wangaratta Art Gallery, 2025. Photo Jeremy Weihrauch. Elisa Jane Carmichael, Mirrigimpa, 2024, Talwalpin, fish scales, eco dyed cotton fabric and thread, glass bottle, hydrosol scent, driftwood, wire, 650 x 160 x 50cm. Highly Commended Ruth Amery Award winner, Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025. Installation view, Wangaratta Art Gallery, 2025. Photo Jeremy Weihrauch.