HAZELHURST
ART ON PAPER AWARD
2025 27 September 2025 - 25 January 2026
Nicholas Aplin
Olivia Arnold
Karima Baadilla
Tania Babic
Christopher Banks
Hannah Bath
Nicci Bedson
Emily Besser
Lee Bethel
James Birch
Julia Boros
Elyn Brey
Peter Burke
Evie Cahir
August Carpenter
Stephen Clively
Zara Collins
Sal Cooper
Karen Coull
Juanella Donovan
Steven Isaac Durbach
Julie Edgar
Madi Feist
Freyja Fristad
Todd Fuller
Annette Galstaun
Stefanus Gevers
Edwina Green
Amala Groom
Rochelle Haley
Lise Hobcroft
Naomi Hobson
MeiMei Hodgkinson
Gina Jaaskelainen
Naomi Kantjurini
Iluwanti Ken
Belem Lett
Pamela Leung
Brenda Livermore
Mark Merrikin
Elena Misso
Simon Nicholls
Michelle Neal
Anh Nguyen
Jessica Nothdurft
Lauren O’Connor
Ruby Paroissien
Sabine Pick
Shirley Ploog
Isobel Rayson
Peter Sharp
Mignon Steele
Michael Tawa
Teo Treloar
Zev Tropp
John Vella
Ellen Vince-Moin
Julie Visible
Belinda Yee
Frank Young
Zuza Zochowski
With thanks to our Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2025 Sponsors
Principal Award Sponsor
Local Artist Award Sponsor
INTRODUCTION
Testing the relationship between message and medium, American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) created what are known as the “envelope poems” between roughly 1870 and 1885. These makeshift and fragile fragments are little scraps of paper on which poems were carefully hand-written in pencil. Although small in scale, each of these fragments of material and language bear immense contributions to histories of imagination and poetry. In the corner of one envelope Dickinson writes: “Excuse / Emily and / her Atoms / the North / Star is / of small fabric but it / implies / much / presides / yet.” Dickinson’s masterful manipulations of paper as “small fabric” demonstrate the undeniable power of paper.
Perhaps Dickinson’s “envelope poems” might serve as slight emblems for paper’s great potential, as well as its ability to be endlessly experimented with by poets and artists alike. Indeed, innovation with the medium of paper has been central to Hazelhurst Arts Centre for more than two decades. Held every two years since 2001, the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award is a significant national exhibition that aims to promote excellence and innovation in the field of art on paper, while supporting artists working with this medium. This year marks its thirteenth exhibition. The works in the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2025 demonstrate the materiality of paper, its versatility and the possibilities of paper as a medium.
This year entries were received by 920 artists from across Australia. The final selection of 61 works includes a diverse and exciting range of works and mediums including painting, drawing, collage, photography, printmaking, papercuts, sculpture and video.
Thank you to artist Patrick Hartigan and curator Emily Rolfe, who along with myself and Curatorial Assistant, Dr Lauren McCartney formed the selection panel and went through an enjoyable yet challenging and lengthy process to select for the 61 finalists.
Thank you to artist and curator Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham for undertaking the difficult task of selecting the award recipients. Congratulations to all of this year’s award winners and finalists.
Hazelhurst would like to acknowledge the generous support of Eckersley’s Art & Craft for their sponsorship, as well as the Friends of Hazelhurst who sponsor the Local Artist Award. In addition, thank you to the Sutherland Shire Council for their ongoing support of Hazelhurst Arts Centre.
Dr Victoria Wynne Jones
Curator Exhibitions and Programs
Hazelhurst Arts Centre
2025 AWARD RECIPIENTS
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2025
Rochelle Haley
Rising Switch, 2025
watercolour and ink on paper
Young & Early Career Artist Award
Isobel Rayson
Enclosed, 2025
Pigma Micron pen and black Indian ink on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper
Friends of Hazelhurst Local Artist Award
Freya Fristad
VESSEL #6, 2024
linocut relief on Accademia, mounted on aluminium
Preparator’s Residency Award Awarded by the Hazelhurst install team
Frank Young
Kulata Tjuta, 2025
acrylic on paper
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2025 Judge
Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham
Judge’s comments:
“This year’s finalists prove paper to be an endlessly mutable medium—folded, woven, stitched, scorched, collaged and animated. Artists turn to it for its fragility and resilience, as a carrier of memory, grief, protest, humour, and everyday ritual. Some works confront embodied experience—illness, parenthood, queerness, or cultural inheritance—while others expand into collective narratives of migration, social precarity, and ancestral knowledge. Again and again, acts of care recur: recording light and tide, reworking family archives, weaving security from envelopes, transforming discarded matter into vessels of value. Whether intimate or political, diaristic or monumental, these practices remind us that paper is never neutral—it holds the trace of touch, the imprint of time, and the possibility of transformation.”
NICHOLAS ALPIN
Sunset Tower is part of an ongoing series exploring Melbourne’s public housing towers. They are iconic yet often overlooked structures that shape the city’s skyline. These monolithic forms have become synonymous with both urban challenges and community resilience. Sunset Tower focuses on the structure, showcasing its uniform construction yet distinct character. Horizonless and skyless, the only hints of a world beyond the tower are vague reflections in windows. The limited yet vibrant palette speaks to the many colours that concrete can appear.
Nicholas Aplin lives and works on Wurundjeri land in Upper Ferntree Gully in Victoria.
Sunset Tower
2025
pencil and oil pastel on cardboard
600 x 1100 x 100 mm
OLIVIA ARNOLD
Olivia Arnold’s practice documents place through the mindful observation of ephemeral elements. Arnold employs meditative mark-making as a means of slowing down the documentation process, memorialising the fleeting imagery she depicts. High Tide 1.35m, 33.8983° S, 151.2703° E depicts a blustering day at Tamarama. The concertina artist book of 60 drawings and culminating animation, extends Arnold’s practice into the digital realm. Through rotoscope techniques, a five second recording of waves crashing into Tamarama Point was extended into a project of repetition, and engagement with the relentless power of nature. This study of the impermanent qualities of light and tide, allows Arnold to immerse herself within landscape and the act of looking.
Oliva Arnold lives and works on Gadigal and Wangal land in Summer Hill, New South Wales.
High Tide 1.35m, 33.8983° S, 151.2703° E 2025 pencil on concertina, thread, hand-drawn animation loop dimensions variable
KARIMA BAADILLA
This collection of six paintings serves as a kind of diary. During a migraine episode, there isn’t much I can do, my whole world shrinks to the coffee table and sometimes on an exciting day; the kitchen table.
Both my neurologist and psychiatrist have recommended keeping a diary to help identify patterns in my migraines. On good days, I can still make it to the studio; on others, I might only manage a quick sketch. Either way, I can’t stay too long, as overexertion prolongs the migraine. That’s partly why I choose paper: there’s less preparation involved. No stretching canvas, attaching it to a frame, or stapling. Some ask why I work on paper when it’s less archival, but I find comfort in that impermanence.
Karima Baadilla lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung land in Clunes, Victoria.
Migraine Diaries 1-6
2025
oil on paper
295 x 420 mm each
TANIA BABIC
Confliction depicts two, near-identical cats with contradicting expressions – one communicating, one passive - as a representation of confliction as part of the human condition. Their presentation highlights the frequency of internal conflict and unresolved feelings, which the artist extends to all living things as a comment towards the complexity of life – many things remain uncertain and unresolved.
Confliction reflects the artist’s practice and keenness towards paper – she realistically depicts natural subjects as motifs representing the natural condition. She primarily uses paper with traditional mark-making techniques, transforming the flat paper into an image of implied form. The versatile paper withstands rigorous layering and embossing, capturing subjects in a manipulated image.
Tania Babic lives and works on Tayngurung and Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land in Victoria.
Confliction
2025 graphite pencil on paper
210 x 297 mm
CHRISTOPHER BANKS
As a child, Fire Cracker Night was momentous. All pocket money would be saved and we’d clamber in front of the glass counter at our local corner store, mesmerised at all the fire crackers on offer.
Christopher Banks lives and works on Dharawal and Wodi Wodi land in Windang, New South Wales.
Cracker Night
2025 pencil on hot-pressed paper 1090 x 885 mm
HANNAH BATH
When my daughter was almost one, she contracted ‘hand, foot and mouth disease’ and abruptly weaned herself off breastfeeding. I plunged deep into a sense of failure and grief for losing this intimate connection with my child. I stood in the shower, breasts on fire, draining milk, hormones crashing. Neither my mind nor body had time to process the change. Five days later, just to keep me on my toes, she started breastfeeding again as if nothing had happened.
Crying Milk is a memory seared into my body, one of the many times I have been utterly humbled as a parent. The drawing echoes the act of remembering, a form taking shape through the haze of memory. An excruciating release of tears amongst the steam.
Hannah Bath lives and works on Turrbul land in Nundah, Queensland.
Crying Milk 2025 watercolour and colour pencil on paper 193 x 290 mm
NICCI BEDSON
Crafted from woven and papermache Centrelink documents, the chairs’ material speaks to the fragility of our social and financial support systems. The chairs exist in tension, as a paradoxical symbol of support and comfort – with our welfare system a crucial yet tenuous source of stability to many people. It invites reflection on the fragility of social safety nets, questioning the spaces we rely on for stability and the ways they sometimes fail us. There is a delicacy with the work and subject at play. The title is a reference to the long waiting and processing times that are synonymous with Centrelink.
Nicci Bedson lives and works on Dharawal land in East Corrimal, New South Wales.
“Take a Seat”
2024 paper (recycled Centrelink paperwork), watercolour, wire 200 x 240 x 160 mm each
EMILY BESSER
The title Sinkhole Dreams came to me while I was working on this drawing. I live on reclaimed swampland in Redfern where Shea’s Creek historically becomes the lagoon and sand dunes of Moore Park. Occasionally, the road or footpath sags into the damp earth, creating a ‘sinkhole.’ The persistent holes are promptly patched up with hot tar and forgotten until next time. A sinkhole is a terrifying thing in an urban landscape: a glitch in the functional order of things, a disruption to the pattern we rely on. With this drawing I wanted to work with layers, both real and imagined and keep visible what is normally covered over and ignored: mistakes, etched plans and the raw paper itself. As I burnished the surface of the paper, I played with found shapes, building a dizzy world of figure/ground relationships.
Emily Besser lives and works on Gadigal land in Redfern, New South Wales.
Dreams 2025
wax and pigment on tinted 250gsm paper
595 x 424 mm
Sinkhole
LEE BETHEL
As an artist, experiences of the creative world touch my heart, fill me with admiration, and make me reconsider my view of the world. It may lay deeply woven in my subconscious or lay quite openly in the choices I make in my own practice. The women artists named in this piece all make me the artist that I am.
Lee Bethel lives and works on Dharawal land in Bundeena.
Self Portrait as an Artist
2025
watercolour on hand-cut paper
178 x 75 x 4 mm
JAMES BIRCH
Shape Shifting. Collage with paper and cardboard, utilizing house paint and ink.
James Birch lives and works on Kuring-Gai land in Mount Kuring-Gai, New South Wales.
Shape Shifters
2025 paper, cardboard, paint, ink, collage
1900 x 1400 x 15 mm
JULIA BOROS
Shapeshifter explores the human condition and material culture through sewing pattern paper. Delicate tissue is collaged around the circumference of a white nylon rope, forming a bundle that evokes an ill-fitting second skin. This fragile form suggests a body in transition, caught between containment and expansion. Once used to dictate form, the paper is removed from its original role, fraying at the edges. Physical and psychological boundaries emerge through the tension between the crumpled surface and the rope’s constraint, reflecting on identity and transformation.
Julia Boros lives and works on Kaurna land in Norwood, South Australia.
Shapeshifter
2025
sewing pattern paper, rope, medium dimensions variable
ELYN BREY
This portrait is an homage to Emily Dickinson, and her beautiful poem, ‘Hope’. When I recently came across this poem, the imagery captivated me, and the words encouraged me. I imagined Emily, with feathers of hope cascading around her, and after some sketching, my portrait emerged.
Elyn Brey lives and works on Dharug and Gundungurra land in Blaxland, New South Wales.
Hope, With Feathers
2025
paper thread
240 x 280 mm
PETER BURKE
Over the past few years, I’ve been creating facsimiles of handwritten notes I’ve found in public spaces. I’m drawn to their speculative nature— the mystery behind who wrote them, and why—as well as the unique handwriting and the wear each piece of paper carries. By replicating them as large-scale drawings, I turn these small, ephemeral objects into monuments that invite closer scrutiny and interpretation. Even the most banal note can offer insight into the human condition, reveal overlooked stories— or like ‘I am not a bin’—suggest double meanings.
Peter Burke lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land in Kensington, Victoria.
I am not a bin
2025
ink, charcoal, graphite, acrylic, pastel on paper 2300 x 1800 mm
EVIE CAHIR
My work invites viewers to reflect on their own experience with space, both visually and bodily. Drawing inspiration from Fauvism, a vibrant and audacious Western European art movement from the early 20th century that emphasised bold, expressive colour. This focus on colour as a vehicle for emotional and spatial awareness forms the core of my artistic exploration and expression.
Evie Cahir lives and works on Wurundjeri land in Kew, Victoria.
Robbie leaning forward to get a sponge out of the bucket, he’s washing the car in his parents backyard 2025 pencil on paper
840 x 640 mm
AUGUST CARPENTER
August Carpenter uses a drawing and print-based practice to examine interactions between person and place. Her built landscapes are familiar yet foreign, exploring and challenging perceived environments, recollection and emotion. Abandoning attachment and cognitive landscape allows for the reconsidering of place, and of what it means to exist in the current state of rapid climate collapse.
August Carpenter lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land in Cottles Bridge, Victoria.
the ground is the whole world
2024
charcoal, pigment and beeswax on paper
670 x 430 x 40 mm
Courtesy Australian Galleries
STEPHEN CLIVELY
Waiting for Phở is part of a series of collages celebrating the variety of life in cafes, restaurants and bars across Australia.
In Waiting for Phở a woman waits for her meal at a Vietnamese restaurant. The restaurant’s entrance features a tuk-tuk van which occupies much of the artwork, that is composed of paper over an acrylic paint background. Despite the flatness of the crimson background, the placement of the paper conveys a sense of depth.
Stephen Clively lives and works on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land in Aranda, ACT.
Waiting for Phở (Bistro Nguyens, Canberra)
2024 paper, acrylic paint, Posca pen 549 x 420 mm
ZARA COLLINS
They Will Never Find Us reflects on childhood games and the nostalgia they evoke. Inspired by memories of playing hide-and-seek, recently rekindled through watching my nieces play the same game. The work explores the quiet collaboration between adults and children in suspending disbelief. It speaks to a longing for an idealised past and the enduring magic of make-believe.
Zara Collins lives and works on Dharawal and Wodi Wodi land in Bellambi, New South Wales.
They will never find us
2024
Kozo papers, graphite, thread, wadding, porcelain, stain, second-hand children’s chairs and shoes
1650 x 1000 x 600 mm
SAL COOPER
My Regards to the Damaged Pigeon comprises hundreds of sequential charcoal drawings on paper. The act of creating this is very labour intensive, and in this case is a process both celebratory and melancholic.
For many years my artistic practice has centred on stop-motion and hand drawn animation, with a particular focus on other-than-human entities. I use this as a means of exploring the latent vitality of the world around us, while also giving form to its inherent absurdity.
Sal Cooper lives and works on Wurundjeri land in Fitzroy North, Victoria.
My Regards to the Damaged Pigeon
2024
HD video (no audio) duration: 45 seconds
KAREN COULL
“Whenever I visit her, she gives me cuttings. All of mine are from familiar places.” Bell & Hawkes, Generations: Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters.
Mabel Heaps Armstrong Noble (née Reynolds) was my grandmother. Born April Fools’ Day in 1896, she was a very stern and deeply-religious woman who found strength through her faith and lived (as of the times) a hard life through wars, a depression, the deaths of two husbands and illness. I was drawn to this recently-found and blurry image of the stoic Mabel (picking potatoes circa 1940s) and this surprising image of joy and her wide smile. My grandmother taught me to sew and I wanted to celebrate her in rosebud and fern stitch and those small stories from my personal garden. My art practice focusses on exploring this invisibility as an ageing woman.
Karen Coull lives and works on Wangal land in Enfield, New South Wales.
The Many Shades of Mabel Reynolds Armstrong Heaps Noble
2025 hand stitched cotton embroidery on paper
650 x 480 x 30 mm each
JUANELLA DONOVAN
Juanella’s recent lineal works on paper relate to the repetitive nature of stitching in her weaving works which are inspired by her homelands and life. Her work represents special places and Women’s Business. Her lines delicately fade from dark to light showcasing the song lines/story lines that come in strong to these sites then fade away for the next one to start. The lines also speak to the existence of generations of strong First Nations Women, and how each generation learns from previous generations, and teaches the next.
Juanella Donovan lives and works on Barngarla land in Port Augusta South Australia.
Homelands
2025 ink on paper
1600 x 1500 mm
STEVEN ISAAC DURBACH
I constructed a machine that has an ordered behaviour at the core – like my breathing, but at its extremities it produces disordered drawings – like my hands flailing to make a mark. Envious of the machine’s wild markmaking, I tried to emulate it. I got the idea from cybernetics to link myself to the machine so my drawing motion influenced its drawing motion and vice versa. I reduced the control over my drawing by placing the pen at the end of a pendulous structure which periodically linked to the machine during the drawing process. The resulting fish-like structure (left panel) that the machine drew, and bird-like structure (right panel) that came from my pen, linked to the pendulum, this felt like a gentle tension between my own agency and what the machine desired.
Steven Isaac Durback lives and works on Bidjigal and Gadigal land in Maroubra, New South Wales.
Fish and Bird
2024 ink on paper 970 x 1500 mm
JULIE EDGAR
My landscape painting practice explores the complex relationship between perception, consciousness and our connection to the natural world, capturing the everchanging moments of the ephemeral, ethereal and the transient. Inspired by the landscapes of Guringai and Dyarubbin, I endeavour to capture the emotional and intuitive response to the beauty of these places while inviting a stillness and contemplation.
Julie Edgar lives and works on Guringai land in Belrose, New South Wales.
5:45 | 24:6:24
2024
acrylic on paper
594 x 420 mm
MADI FEIST
Madi Feist is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, assemblage, and video. Central to her practice are themes of consumerism and consumption which she playfully dissects through her work. Her longterm habit of collecting unwanted materials has fuelled a practice that reinvigorates and recontextualises everyday objects. She uses these discarded pieces to create works that are driven by chance and intuition, examining themes of femininity, cultural identities, humour and desire. Her works often mimic commonplace items, like handbags or framed paintings. Upon closer inspection, these familiar items reveal their material uncanniness encouraging viewers to reconsider which objects are deemed valuable or disposable in the current socio-economic climate.
Madi Feist lives and works on Gadigal land in Dulwich Hill, New South Wales.
5 Years Bad Luck
2024
recycled paper, mirror, coloured glass, jute, cardboard, dowel, resin 450 x 360 x 130 mm
FREYJA FRISTAD
Freyja Fristad is a proud Wiradjuri print-based artist living and working on Dharawal land. VESSEL #6 emerges from her post-graduate research into cultural dislocation and the generational loss of ancestral knowledge. Using a lined-bitmap technique, she merges photography with relief printmaking to transform domestic objects into metaphysical vessels — symbols of grief, absence, and cultural loss. The image appears to shift and flicker, the moiré effect echoing the disorientation of cultural erasure. Here, the vessel becomes a charged, liminal void where presence and absence co-exist, inviting reflection on what has been lost and what may yet be reclaimed.
Winner Friends of Hazelhurst Local Artist Award 2025
VESSEL #6
2024
linocut relief on Accademia, mounted on aluminium 980 × 980 mm
TODD FULLER
My hand-drawn animation, 1940: Based on a True Story, is a speculative history piece focusing on two men who may have been same-sex lovers during World War II. While the evidence around this pair is inconclusive, diary entries and other primary materials suggest a special relationship between a young Australian pilot who died in the Battle of Britain and his male guardian, who sponsored his aeronautical training after bringing him to England. This piece also explores the obscured nature of queer history, a consequence of homosexuality historically being illegal, often leading to the erasure of evidence. The elevation of queer history has been an important objective in my practice, aiming to challenge dominant narratives and honouring the lives and relationships of LGBTIQ Australians.
Todd Fuller lives and works on Gweagal, Bidjigal and Gadigal land in Arncliffe, New South Wales.
1940: Based on a True Story
2024
digital video, chalk, charcoal, acrylic and watercolour animation on paper duration: 4.30 minutes
Edition 2 of 4; Composition: Paul Smith; Trumpet: Ryley Gillen
ANNETTE GALSTAUN
As an artist, Annette is known for creating gentle whimsical works, populated with mermaids, fairies and the guardian angels she communes with nightly. The most well known being Magical Putt Putt, her landmark solo exhibition at Cement Fondu, which saw her family of angels feature as playable putt putt sculptures and herself as a monumental fairy godmother.
Tyrannosaurus Rex marks an exciting departure, inspired by a recent screening of the 1990’s blockbuster Jurassic Park. In awe of the fearsome creatures she witnessed, Annette became driven to render them in her world, gilded in gold leaf and glitter, glowing with the same sparkle of her favourite Disney fairytales. Annette says that this T-rex is a female; formidable and feminine, in her barren, desert landscape.
Annette Galstaun works on Cammeraygal land in St Leonards, Sydney, with Studio A, a leading supported studio for professional artists with intellectual disability.
Tyrannosaurus Rex, She Emerges from the Jungle
2025
watercolour pencil, gouache, ink, coffee, gold leaf and glitter on Arches watercolour paper 1025 x 815 mm
STEFANUS GEVERS
Gevers’ approach of combining minimalist sculptural forms with soft, buttery pastel hues results in artworks that exude tranquillity, yet subtly hint at underlying complexities. The delicate balance of intentionally damaging the paper—pushing it to a threshold where it remains intact—introduces a compelling tension that mirrors the delicate equilibrium we strive for amid life’s uncertainties. These watercolour sculptures embody duality: they serve as both contemplative landscapes and intimate personal expressions. Through this interplay, Gevers invites viewers to explore the nuanced coexistence of calm and tension, encouraging reflection on the fragile balance inherent in our experiences.
Stefanus Gevers lives and works on Yalukit Willam land in Newport, Victoria.
Alternating Rhythms
2025
watercolour and gouache on Arches HP paper, stretched on a timber frame 1050 x 630 x 100 mm
Courtesy Gallery Suki & Hugh
EDWINA GREEN
This work was developed through research surrounding the First Nations women of Lutruwita who were stolen by sealers, and rarely returned back to Country. In 2019, my Aunty Gail lended me 7 folders with familial documents, and years of her research, in one of them, was an incomprehensible amount of pages with the names of these women, many of which had children. Through this archival material, similarly to many First Peoples internationally, these images are often caricaturised depictions of ancestors, commonly without names, and only sometimes with the location, or a homogenised location where the image was drawn or painted. In reclaiming these images, we are able to humanise, the ‘other.’ These images are not just distant memories, they are our family.
Edwina Green lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong land in Caroline Springs, Victoria.
And the Baby Pulled Her Coils, As If They Were Montessori Toys
2025 screenprint on paper
995 x 695 mm
AMALA GROOM
more crows than cops emerges from a moment of ancestral intervention during a site visit to Parliament House. Feeling physically unwell upon entry, the artist retreated to the upper terrace cafe, where a waagun (crow) was seen eating scraps as federal police stood nearby—symbols of the colonial state. In stillness, the crow spoke: “We are stronger than the police,” then, “more crows than cops.” The message affirmed the power of Ancestors and the natural world over colonial authority. On exiting, the artist saw a jigsaw of Parliament House in the gift shop—its illusion of order already unravelled. Rendered in English and Wiradyuri, the phrase becomes a metaphysical declaration—situating cultural knowledge, deep listening, and spiritual resistance as counter-forces to state power.
Amala Groom lives and works on Wiradjuri land in Kelso, New South Wales.
more crows than cops
2025
vinyl print on Australian Parliament House puzzle 700 x 500 mm each Edition of 5 + 1AP
ROCHELLE HALEY
Rising Switch is a watercolour painting on paper that explores the fluid interplay of light, movement, and space, drawing from Haley’s deep engagement with both painting and performance. Colour in the work is a living force—it can shift, change, and embody the rhythms of dance and the radiant energy of light. Haley’s watercolour works, with their fluidity and transparency, act as both abstract compositions and registers of movement, inviting viewers to contemplate how light, space, and gesture intersect.
Rochelle Haley lives on the lands of the Dharawal peoples in Thirroul and works on Gadigal land in Sydney, New South Wales.
Winner Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2025
Rising Switch
2025
watercolour and ink on paper
1050 x 750 mm
Courtesy of Ames Yavuz
LISE HOBCROFT
The woven form has long symbolised security – used to wrap, conceal, or protect what lies behind it. This is echoed in the design of the security envelope; lines & patterns mimic the woven structure of cloth. These printed veils guard contents as envelopes pass hands, carrying the intimate exchange between two people. That oncevisible layer of security has become nearly obsolete. Personal messages and sensitive data now travel through an invisible cloud, purportedly secure, yet occasionally vulnerable. When the digital envelope fails what was private is suddenly exposed.
This woven paper blanket reflects on the fragility of digital privacy. Suggesting the original, tactile and visible form of protection – woven, deliberate and material, may still offer the most trustworthy form of safeguarding what is personal.
Lise Hobcroft lives and works on Wangal land in Concord, New South Wales.
SECURITY BLANKET
2025
handwoven paper cloth on a countermarch floor loom, using security envelopes and cotton 1400 x 640 x 100 mm
NAOMI HOBSON
Naomi Hobson is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, photography and ceramics. She resides on her mother’s traditional land and sea. Home of the Southern Kaantju people.
Her colourful abstract compositions act as a link between individuality and a shared identity. Her continual inspiration is the vast traditional lands of her ancestors surrounding the town of her Coen Community and culture. The photographs document time; a past moving forward. It is celebrating culture and identity. A responsibility for holding on to tradition is being passed down through clans’ family and individuals. A Warrior Without A Weapon confronts the common negative stereotypes of Indigenous men and shows their humanity and love.
Sir Willy, A Warrior Without A Weapon
2025 pigment print on archival cotton rag paper
900 x 900 mm
Courtesy of Hossack Art Gallery
MEIMEI HODGKINSON
Inspired by Sanné Mestrom’s
Self Portrait (Sleeping Muse), MeiMei Hodgkinson continues to recontextualise Brancusi’s
Sleeping Muse with a feminist lens. Subverting the traditional hierarchies of materials in the arts ecology, the artist challenges the concept of permanence and monumentality by substituting bronze with paper.
MeiMei Hodgkinson lives and works on Bunurong and Wadawurrung land in Werribee, Victoria.
Sleeping Muse #2 (After Mestrom & Brâncuși)
2025 handmade mulberry paper, handmade rice paper, foam, clay and wire on polymer plastic stand
260 x 190 x 195 mm
GINA JAASKELAINEN
Fear and loathing is in many ways a self-portrait. Though I did not intend it to be, it is clearly a visual expression of myself. I am outwardly disturbed, saddened and melancholic. My bloodshot, fearful eyes could at any moment flood the paper. I am inwardly disgusted with my gentle self, and my subtly disdainful lips struggle to contain this. I think this painting shows my frustration at living; yet on paper, I can be at one minute gentle and loving, and at another fear and loathing.
Gina Jaaskelainen lives and works on Dharug and Gundungurra land in Katoomba, New South Wales.
Fear and loathing
2025
acrylic on paper
554 x 432 mm
NAOMI KANTJURINYI
“The Tjukurpa I am painting is about a mamu’s place… They have so much hair on their bodies it looks like fur.
I’ve carried the image around in my imagination. I can’t think about any other story. I only paint mamu. That’s all.” – Naomi Kantjurinyi
Naomi Kantjurinyi is a revered ngangkari (traditional healer) whose art is deeply connected to her healing work. She paints mamu, evil spirit beings from Anangu Tjukurpa who roam the night hunting vulnerable spirits. As a ngangkari, Naomi uses mara ala (open hands) to protect and heal, releasing mamu and reuniting people with their kurunpa (spirit). Her black and white works vividly map these fearsome beings’ movements through Country.
Naomi Kantjurinyi lives and works in the Amata Community in Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY Lands), South Australia.
2025
ink on cotton rag paper
560 x 760 mm
Minyma Mamu Tjuta (white paper)
ILUWANTI KEN
I paint the stories of my father’s Country – Walawuru Tjukurpa – the story of the eagles. This is my Tjukurpa, and it is also my children’s Tjukurpa.
Birds like the walawuru (eagles) and patupiri (swallows) teach us important lessons. They show Anangu women how to care for their children. These birds build strong wiltjas (shelters) for their families, hunt for food, and protect their young from danger.
Anangu mothers are just like those birds. We go out hunting, bring food home, keep our children safe, and build strong, safe homes for them.
Iluwanti Ken lives and works in the Amata Community in Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY Lands), South Australia.
Walawuru Tjukurpa – The story of the eagles
2025
mixed media, acrylic, ink, wool on cotton rag 1500 x 1000 mm
BELEM LETT
Belem Lett’s work playfully posits that light and colour are inseparably the same. The act of painting is considered through histories of abstraction, gestural movement, colour and light movements. This exploration is materialised through the use of reductive, industrial surfaces and paint applied with a wide, colour-loaded brush. There is an implicit physical momentum involved in Lett’s work; the push/pull, twists, the drag of the brush, the drip, the stop and start.
Lift Yourself Up explores the surface and conventional constraints of painting through, at times, bouncing off its edges and returning inwards to explore the interior space of the painting.
Belem Lett lives and works on Gadigal land in Marrickville.
Lift
Yourself Up
2024
oil, gesso on Stonehenge paper 245gsm
860 x 670 mm
PAMELA LEUNG
Agglomerate (2022–) is an evolving communal artwork made of crocheted twine, produced by more than fifty members of the Hong Kong diaspora across the globe using local Chinese-language newspapers printed in traditional characters. Centred by a section crocheted by the artist’s 94-year-old mother, the mat symbolises resilience, memory, and cultural continuity. As it travels and grows through each exhibition and gathering, Agglomerate becomes both a record and a space for connection, weaving together individual stories into a shared fabric.
Pamela Leung lives and works on Gamaragal land in Northbridge, New South Wales.
Agglomerate
2022 – ongoing newspaper and tape 2000 mm diameter
BRENDA LIVERMORE
The basis for this work began in the huge farm-shed of my childhood. This was the place where I learned about creativity from a seemingly unlikely source, my father, a multi-generational farmer who trained as a fitter and turner in his youth. In this shed, he would create machines, ideas and solutions using steel and ingenuity (alongside his usual farm activities). Over the years, like an artist’s studio, you could ‘read’ the potential in piles of steel, lathes, hand tools and welding equipment.
Brenda Livermore lives and works on Gadigal land in Camperdown, New South Wales.
Walking Between Worlds
2025 paper weaving over armature
1350 x 80 x 90 mm
MARK MERRIKIN
Artist looking at their place within family and the world. Honing in on moments that naturally repeat and the imagination that is allowed with this time.
Mark Merrikin lives and works on Gadigal land in Camperdown.
Which bird chirped first this morning and where’s that plane going?
2025
acrylic and pencil on paper
1200 x 815 x 30 mm
ELENA MISSO
Symmetries is part of an ongoing photographic series exploring the form and topology of paper.
For this print, paper undergoes a series of transformations, as both the featured subject and the substrate for carrying the image. Folding, twisting, peeling, stretching – through these actions a flat plane becomes a sculptural form, investigating what paper can do.
The camera lens observes the contours of these paper forms at close scale. By taking a photo, they are flattened temporarily and held in transit on film. The darkroom enlarger magnifies them anew, transposing paper back to paper. Form is reinstated, made and remade in print.
Elena Misso lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land in Collingwood, Victoria.
Symmetries
2025 colour darkroom print
675 x 980 x 30 mm
SIMON NICHOLLS
My goal is to create art that stimulates the imagination of the viewer by telling an interesting story.
My artwork is of the theme park ‘Wonderland’ once located in Eastern Creek in the Blacktown Council Area of Sydney. This theme park opened in 1983 and closed in early 2004. This artwork is based on photos I took during my final visit to Wonderland a few months before it closed. The figures greeting the approaching visitors are people dressed as Hannah Barbara animated characters who I frequently saw at Wonderland when I visited the theme park as a child. This theme park was an enjoyable part of my childhood which is gone, but not forgotten.
Simon Nicholls lives and works on Bidjigal land in Revesby, New South Wales.
Made with the support of Little Orange Studio, Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Escape from everyday land
2025
acrylic on paper 565 x 765 mm
MICHELLE NEAL
Many of the works in my art practice explore the theme of value. I explore this theme through materials, subject matter and size. I use domestic food boxes to create small and softly spoken, text-based works that centre around everyday observations, connection and care. Offerings uses tiny letters, hand-cut from the inside of porridge box cardboard to expresses the value to be found in the simple and the everyday.
Michelle Neal lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land in Camberwell, Victoria.
Offerings
2024
Hand-cut cereal box cardboard on paper
466 x 366 mm
ANH NGUYEN
Spring is Here Again (after Bonnard’s Le Verger) explores the dynamic between mark-making, visual imagery, and the flatness of the picture plane, set against the vibrant energy of its subject. By using the Gelli plate technique to fix soft pastel marks permanently, I have been able to explore printmaking in a direct, intuitive way that preserves the freshness of drawn lines and celebrates the material beauty and rich pigment of soft pastels.
Anh Nguyen lives and works on Dharawal land in Thirroul, New South Wales.
Spring is Here Again (after Bonnard ‘Le Verger’)
2024 soft-pastel drawing monotype on paper, mounted on board
310 x 730 x 45 mm
JESSICA NOTHDURFT
In this work, the boogeyman walks another boogeyman, hinting at cycles of harm. The two small children, innocent and exposed, are bound by a white ribbon, a symbol of blood ties, purity, and the unbreakable bond between siblings. Hovering above is the angel, watching over them, a silent guardian, a mother figure. Rendered in the style of a pop-up children’s book, the piece uses playful, naive forms to disarm the viewer while confronting the darker realities of childhood trauma and family violence. Through this contrast, the work invites reflection on innocence lost, protection, and the enduring impact of early relationships.
Jessica Nothdurft lives and works on Turrbal land in Brighton, Queensland.
Boogeymen
2025
synthetic polymer paint, metallic watercolour, gouache, coloured pencil, graphite and silk ribbon on paper
570 x 760 x 30 mm
LAUREN O’CONNOR
I have been considering the things that humanity shares even though we are scattered across vast distances. In these divisive times it seems necessary to remind ourselves that we share so much.
This diptych of gouache and chalk pastel drawings depicts the sun and a common edible plant I came across mallow (malva neglecta) a weed that is scattered as far and wide as we are, which thrives in harsh and neglected soil.
Lauren O’Connor lives and works on Wangal land in North Croydon, New South Wales.
Dispersion
2025
gouache, ink, watercolour, Texta and chalk pastel 760 x 560 mm each
RUBY PAROISSIEN
From pages of plants explores the materiality of paper. For this work, oil on wooden board physically uses no paper in its creation, but it evokes the physicality of it in the representation of rips and creases. Inspired by a collage torn-out of a magazine, it draws attention to the temporality of paper as a material as well as its repurposing. The inclusion of pages with written words presented on their side and almost illegible, draws attention to one of the greatest uses of paper, and shows a transition to a new state. This is also emphasised in the subject matter shown through depictions of trees and houses, a reminder of the origins and alternative uses of the material, encapsulating a sense of history and change in state. In this final presentation of paper, it evolves from tree to magazine.
Ruby Paroissien lives and works on Dharawal land in Bulli, New South Wales.
From pages of plants
2025 oil on wooden board
609 x 456 x 19 mm
SABINE PICK
Sifting through old floral encyclopedias and botanical books, I’m drawn to the beauty of images, the texture of the paper and the glossy richness of print. These books portray nature as perfect, static, and eternal—unfading and neatly-classified. I begin cutting gently with scissors. Through a process of tearing, editing, and rearranging, this series of paper collages reimagines botanical order, favouring wilder, less-tame possibilities. This kind of ‘gardening’ invites reflection and fresh perspective, dismantling familiar structures and habitual thinking. Aged, textured fragments are shaped into sensitive yet intentional forms, echoing my current state of introspection, reevaluation, and personal growth.
Sabine Pick lives and works Arakwal, Widjabal and Minjungbal land in Byron Bay, New South Wales.
Zinnia 2024 paper collage 195 x 148 mm
SHIRLEY PLOOG
Gentle Presence is a response to the quiet beauty and delicate balance of the pink lakes in Yorke Peninsula. Immersed in their shifting colours and gentle patterns, I sought to capture their essence through process as much as image. Working on Yupo paper allowed the paint to move freely, resisting control and inviting a more intuitive, fluid approach. This unpredictable surface mirrored the natural instability of the environment, encouraging a gentle, responsive way of painting that reflects both presence and surrender.
Shirley Ploog lives and works on Wadawurrung land in Barwon Heads, Victoria.
Gentle Presence
2024 oil on Yupo paper 590 x 420 mm
ISOBEL RAYSON
Enclosed forms part of an ongoing series of works on paper titled Protective Structures, that explores themes of privacy, protection, and boundaries, drawing on visual forms observed in the natural world.
Enclosed features an elongated, solitary form, resembling a cocoon-like structure, composed of tightly-layered, parallel hatch markings, set against a rough, stippled background of black Indian ink.
Isobel Rayson lives and works on Ngunnawal and Walbunja land in Carwoola, New South Wales.
Winner Young & Early Career Artist Award 2025
Enclosed
2025 Pigma Micron pen and black indian ink on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper 895 x 705 x 37 mm
PETER SHARP
The work I make may appear abstract, but it all starts with drawings made in the landscape and then the forms are filtered through various media to disrupt and force a visual transformation and this in turn creates questions about how we see ourselves in nature. These particular drawings were made from sea sponges picked up at my local beach in Sydney.
Peter Sharp lives and works on Dharawal land in Grays Point, New South Wales.
charcoal and spray paint on paper
1500 x 1500 mm
MIGNON STEELE
Cosmic artefacts are coded tablets made from an ancient and almost obsolete technology... paper. They are an exploration of paper’s material qualities: lightweight, robust, enduring, compostable. Made from salvaged scraps, Yellow Pages, egg cartons, shredded office paper from the artist’s day job, her daughter’s HSC study notes... With a colour palette limited by the available shades of pulp, tiny fragments of text and images accrue at the surface. What emerges when you think about thinking? Space biscuits that allude to lost testaments, Petri dishes, sundials, alien astronomical devices. Absurd and somewhat awry, are they objects from another time, or another world?
Mignon Steele lives and works on Dharawal and Wodi Wodi land in Bellambi, New South Wales.
Metacog
2025 paper, egg cartons, cardboard, corks
800 x 830 x 50 mm
MICHAEL TAWA
Since retiring from the academy in 2023, I have been developing a printmaking practice focussed on collagraph, woodcut and photogravure. My interests are in mixed media, multi-plate and layering techniques that build complexity, texture and atmosphere. Thematically, I am experimenting with what the diverse materialities of the plates I use (plywood, solid timber, lead, linoleum, cardboard) can contribute as traces, resistances, ambiguities and emergent patterns to the finished print. I draw most of my subject matter from an extensive personal archive of architectural and nature photography; although as my practice develops, I have learned to trust in what the unpredictability of incremental and makeshift processes can deliver.
Michael Tawa lives and works on Ngunnawal land in Kingston, ACT.
Temple 1
2025
Photogravure
208 x 145 mm
TEO TRELOAR
Aphelion is a photographic triptych made in response to the death of a close friend’s brother. It reflects on human experiences of loss, grief, and the enduring nature of friendship. Named for the point in a planet’s orbit when it is farthest from the sun, the work speaks to the slow untethering that follows loss. Featuring Mountain Cassinia, a fragile alpine plant, the images resemble stellar constellations. Made using long-expired, peel-apart Polaroid film, the photographs bear the marks of decay and unpredictability. Scanned without alteration and printed on cotton rag, each retains the Polaroid’s rebate, preserving the fragile tension of time, memory, and touch.
Teo Treloar lives and works on Dharawal land in Wollongong, New South Wales.
Aphelion
2025 expired FP-100c film photograph, pigment print on cotton rag mounted on aluminium 970 x 660 mm each Courtesy of Olsen Gallery
ZEV TROPP
This artwork was created during a recent residency on Wilyakali country with my dear friend Verity Nunan at Broken Hill Art Exchange. The town of Broken Hill is incredibly stark in its delineation of beauty, nature and connection, while still being incredibly conservative at times. Hester Lyon, a friend and participant in our walks speaks to this complexity in their article for Artlink ‘Art and Broken Hill: A-grader, B-grader, Slag Heap’ – for example, the banning of acknowledgments of country and the recent departure of director (and staff) of the regional gallery. While the drawing sat on the periphery of the residency – which was primarily research-based, it ended up telling the story of our experiences walking, sleeping, being outside, translating some of what I had felt at the time.
Zev Tropp lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land in Brunswick, Victoria.
A
teddy bear dreams in a rusty car 2024
graphite, pen, fineliner on acid free paper float framed acrylic and hardwood 1500 x 2035 mm
JOHN VELLA
My sister-in-law takes a daily dose of Lynparza and for me, her empty, unfolded medication boxes hold a latent, mysterious power. I collect and reimagine these boxes, conjuring them into paradoxes, refuges, and reliquaries.
These images are solid yet dissolving. They suggest power and vulnerability. They are buoyant yet weighed down. Each individual image denotes a day as a dose; the repeated style, scale, marks and motifs register reciprocating tinctures.
My vast exposed, crinkling-collective discharges a contingent and emotional material precariat. These taciturn spaces craft a fugitive beauty, steeping me in wondering and dreaming ways of grieving, hoping and healing.
John Vella lives and works on Muwinina land in West Hobart, Tasmania.
Lynparza (four days) 2025 gouache on paper 2100 x 1780 x 10 mm
ELLEN VINCE-MOIN
I am interested primarily in drawing as an act of registration – in this case – the registering of time and of the sublime. Slow-time methodologies are interwoven with my fraught matrilineal connection to Catholicism and crossstitch, to effect sensations embedded in the processes of making.
Devotionals is the methodological catechising of definitions of beauty – and a questioning of the extent to which registration of the sublime can be realised. Via an intersection of themes of time-intensive making, labour is assessed as an aspect of craft and art through which feminist allusions arise. The active elevating of depictions of fabric, thread and gridded cross-stitch patterns are meticulously redrawn in an effort to place textile arts on the same pedestal as different materials.
Ellen Vince-Moin lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land in Fitzroy, Victoria.
Devotionals
2024 pen on paper 1130 x 780 x 50 mm (frame)
JULIE VISIBLE
The Invisible Horse comprises two photographs from a new exhibition The Carousel of Invisibility:
1. The Buckjumper… I’ve got four dicks how many have you got eh?
2. Every day there’s a horse to ride to some place out there somewhere
These self-portraits celebrate the female bushranger Jessie Hickman as the 1905 Winner of the Australian Ladies Rough Rider Championship at age fifteen. While researching the life of this young girl, who was apprenticed to a travelling buckjumping circus due to the hardships of family life; two iPhone photographs were converted to film negatives, with the final images hand-printed in the black-and-white darkroom.
As the shadows rise bold like trophies, the invisible horse becomes a metaphor for sexism, misogyny and the invisible histories of women.
Julie Visible lives and works on Wiradjuri land in Lithgow, New South Wales.
Invisible Horse
L: The Buckjumper … I’ve got four dicks how many have you got eh?
R: Every day there’s a horse to ride to some place out there somewhere
2025 handprinted, archival gelatin silver photographs 1000 x 760 x 30 mm
BELINDA YEE
In Observed form (still), I use the barest means—paper, stone, gesture, light—to distil a form that makes time visible. I draw by slowly pulling a river stone across the paper, each unhurried gesture leaving a debossed trace that quietly measures and binds time to the page. Where the stone passes, the surface takes on a gentle sheen, as though holding the residue of its passage. The stone itself is time made material, its smooth skin shaped by the movement of water and weather over millennia. This is a quiet drawing, consisting only of shadow and light. It asks for presence and time and rewards a slower, more contemplative gaze. I hope this work evokes a sense of ongoingness, and acts as a reminder that the present is part of a longer, unfolding trajectory.
Belinda Yee lives and works on Wangal land in Balmain, New South Wales.
Observed form (still)
2025
425gsm watercolour paper, debossed with a river stone, aluminium channel 1000 x 760 x 30 mm
FRANK YOUNG
This is the story of the spear tjukurpa and the Wanampi men. An army of men go spearing. Two rainbow serpents were talking together, saying, ‘What should we become?’ They discussed many possibilities. As the two were speaking, they said, as one, ‘We’ll become spears.’ They immediately turned into spears. So now, our spears hold that Wanampi tjukurpa. The Wanampi tjukurpa is within the spear shaft.
Frank Young lives and works in the Amata Community in Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY Lands), South Australia.
Winner Preparator’s Residency Award 2025
Kulata Tjuta
2025
acrylic on paper
1520 x 1320 mm
ZUZA ZOCHOWSKI
Port Kembla 2025 is a series of works created en plein air in the industrial area of Port Kembla, just south of Wollongong, in Dharawal Country. Visiting frequently, I capture the area as the light changes, the cargo ships come and go, and the mountains of coal grow in height. I navigate my thoughts as I paint the realities of my local Illawarra landscape and the love/ hate relationship I have with human structures juxtaposed within the organic environment. They make great contrasts to paint, even as I experience them as interlopers in our natural environment.
Zuza Zochowski lives and works on Dharawal land in Russell Vale, New South Wales.
Port Kembla 2025
2025
watercolor on cotton rag
250 x 330 mm each
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Hazelhurst Arts Centre acknowledges the Dharawal people as the Traditional Custodians of the land within the Sutherland Shire. We value and celebrate Dharawal culture and language, and acknowledge Dharawal people’s continuing connection to the land, the sea and community. We pay respect to the Elders and their families, past, present and emerging, and through them, to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award 2025
27 September 202525 January 2026
© 2025
Hazelhurst Arts Centre
782 Kingsway Gymea
NSW 2227 Australia
T: 61 2 8536 5700
E: hazelhurst@ssc.nsw.gov.au hazelhurst.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-921437-71-7
Image credits: all images courtesy of the artists.
Opposite: Ellen Vince-Moin, Devotionals (detail), 2025.
Page 2: Isobel Rayson, Enclosed (detail), 2025.
Page 6-7: Tania Babic, Confliction, 2025.
Page 28-29: Mignon Steele, Metacog (detail), 2025.
Page 50-51: Julia Boros, Shapeshifter (detail), 2025.
Page 72-73: Iluwanti Ken, Walawuru Tjukurpa – The story of the eagles (detail), 2025.
Page 94-95: Zuza Zochowski, Port Kembla 2025, 2025
Page 116-117: Pamela Lueng, Agglomerate, 2022-ongoing.
Photography on pages 11, 21, 25, 26, 33, 35, 43, 57, 59, 67, 67, 71, 75, 89, 93, 109, 116, 119, 121, 129, 133, 137 by Silversalt Photography.
Project Team
Curator: Dr Victoria WynneJones
Curatorial Assistants: Emily Dabron and Dr Lauren
McCartney
Judge: Dr Daniel Mudie
Cunningham
Finalist selection panel: Patrick Hartigan, Dr Lauren McCartney, Emily Rolfe, Dr Victoria Wynne-Jones
Exhibition Preparators: Mark Gumley, Mark Merrikin, Rory Moy, Jordan Smith, Tom Yousif
Hazelhurst Arts Centre Team
Director: Stephanie Kennedy
Curator Exhibitions and Programs: Dr Victoria WynneJones
Curatorial Assistants: Emily Dabron, Dr Lauren McCartney
Team Leader Learning: Laura Carey
Learning Officers: Amy Scully, Jordan Taylor
Marketing Advisor: Stephanie Hopper
Team Leader Visitor
Experience: Caryn Schwartz
Venue Duty Officers: Vilma Hodgson, Giada Cantini, Marilyn Brown, Grant Drinkwater
Visitor Service Assistants: Hannah McClaren, Natasha Nelson, Richard Trang, Victoria Irvine
Visual Merchandiser: Neta Mariakis
Hazelhurst also acknowledges the contribution of our teachers and volunteers.