Windmill Trust Scholarship Recipients

Ellen Ferrier who was announced as the recipient of the 26th annual scholarship for regional NSW artists.

Ferrier will use the $10,000 scholarship to fund material investigations and fabrication of her work for Cementa24 – an immersive installation featuring experimental eco-cements made with problematic plant species from Kandos, a town established and made famous for its cement production.

Ellen Ferrier is an installation artist based in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. Exploring the possibilities of traditional and emergent sustainable materials and technologies, she creates speculative objects and architectures as propositions for a future built on an ethics of care, connection and reciprocity. With preliminary studies in Interior Architecture, wood-fired ceramics and bodywork modalities, she has cultivated a sensitivity and appreciation of materiality, spatial relations and the potency of embodied perception. These have all become paramount concerns within her art practice, which foregrounds notions of care, connection and curiosity towards the natural world.

Juanita McLauchlan was announced as the recipient of 25th annual scholarship for regional NSW artists.

McLauchlan used the $10,000 scholarship to produce a new body of work which draws upon her Gamilaraay identity and family history to explore family connections through body adornment. The result of this enquiry will be Everywhen, a major solo exhibition at Wagga Wagga Gallery curated by Julie Ewington opening in May 2023.

Juanita McLauchlan is a Gamilaraay woman living on Wiradjuri country in Wagga Wagga. An experienced printmaker and mother of five, McLauchlan’s proposal involved developing ideas and techniques incorporating textiles and sculpture to find new ways to explore her Aboriginal heritage through her practice, which for generations was kept very quiet, as a family matter out of the eye of society and the authorities. 

Dr Judith Nangala Crispin was announced as the recipient of 24th annual scholarship for regional NSW artists.

Crispin used the $10,000 scholarship to make a visual-literary portrait of Millewa, the Murray River, where it passes through the Country of her ancestor Charlotte Clark. 

Dr Judith Nangala Crispin, a descendant of the Bpangerang people of north-east Victoria, is a poet and visual artist currently based in Wamboin, a rural-residential area in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. Her practice is centred around lumachrome glass printing, a combination of lumen printing, chemigram and cliché-verre techniques. These alternative photographic methods are augmented in Crispin’s work with drawing. She describes her work as a collaboration with Country, because most materials are drawn from Country. Her artistic process, evolved through extensive experimentation, involves arranging blood, clay, sticks, leaves, seeds, resin, and ochres, with road-killed animals or birds, on light-sensitised paper. She does this en plein air, at the place the creature has died, to avoid disturbing their remains more than necessary.

Debbie Taylor-Worley was the recipient of 23rd annual scholarship for regional NSW artists.

Taylor-Worley used the $10,000 scholarship for a practice-led research trip to visit significant sites between Tamworth and Walgett NSW, reconnecting on her Country with the places of her ancestors. 

Debbie Taylor-Worley is a Gamillaraay woman originally from north west NSW and now based on the Tweed Coast. Her practice ranges from works on paper, canvas and ceramics with an emphasis on utilising natural pigments, dyes, ocean water, ochres and resins. Driven to reconnect with her heritage after the birth of her daughters, Taylor-Worley’s artwork honours the powerful carved trees (dendroglyph) of her Country, many of which have been destroyed in the colonial pursuit of agricultural land. Her most recent ceramic works have been female figurines - abstracted and carved with designs inspired by the dendroglyphs - portraying the strength, integrity, power, resilience and enduring nurturing creativity of womanhood.

Dale Collier was the recipient of 22nd annual scholarship for regional NSW artists.

Collier used the $10,000 scholarship to create and present new experimental artwork in reciprocity and exchange within sites of key bio-spherical and environmental significance between Broken Hill and Newcastle for the 2020 Broken Hill Art Gallery exhibitions program and 2020 Broken Heel Festival. 

Collier said today, "Upon receiving the news that my application to the 2019 Windmill Trust Scholarship was successful, I was overcome by the most ridiculous flood of happy tears. Being awarded this scholarship is an enormous affirmation of my current and future practice and gives great confidence to the world of ideas I inhabit as a critically engaged artist working across urban, regional and remote divides.

Dale Collier is currently based in Newcastle, one of Australia's largest port cities. Working across the disciplines of sound, video, performance and installation, Collier utilises intertextuality to challenge and interrogate postcolonial frameworks, contemporary falsehoods, nationalistic propaganda and northern European convict/settler tradition. Often manifesting as institutional critique, his site-specific projects traverse live spaces and places of key cultural, geo-political and environmental concern. Collier grew up on Yuin Country and now resides within the Awabakal and Wiradjuri Nations. 

NAVA and the Windmill Trust congratulated artist Dr Fiona Foley announced as the recipient of 21st annual scholarship for regional NSW artists.

Foley will use the $10,000 scholarship to travel to her traditional Badtjala country surrounding Hervey Bay and Fraser Island to create a new series of gouache paintings on water-colour paper.

Dr Fiona Foley is a leading contemporary Australian artist with a practice encompassing painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, mixed-media work, found objects and installation to examine and dismantle historical stereotypes. A descendent from the Badtjala people of K’gari, she is currently based in Lismore, NSW. Foley explores a range of concerns through her practice including colonial race relations, sexuality and the experiences of Aboriginal populations at the turn of the twentieth century.

Representatives from the Windmill Trust Management Committee said “we are excited to support an outstanding established professional who is continually striving to take time to renew, refresh and further explore her practice. The Windmill are thrilled to support Fiona Foley in this next phase of her work. 

Rachel Peachey and Paul Mosig were announced as this year’s recipients of the 20th annual Windmill Trust Scholarship for NSW Regional Artists which was doubled this year to $10,000.

"We are very honoured and grateful to receive the 2017 Windmill Trust Scholarship. The generous support of the Trust will allow us the time and space to carry out field research that will inform several new works. It will also give us the opportunity to document and share the outcomes in a quality publication for a wider audience." Rachel Peachey and Paul Mosig

The couple will undergo a process of historical inquiry and a period of creative field research in order to produce two major new works. One will be exhibited as part of ‘The Altitude Project’taking place in Kingsford Smith Park, Katoomba on 17 February 2018, and the other will be part of their ‘Out of Bounds’ project at the Blue Mountains City Art Gallery (BMCAG) in May 2018.

Rachel Peachey and Paul Mosig with their children Sascha and Jack collaborate using photography, video, textiles, sculpture and found objects to look at human / environment relationships and the idea of artist as both maker and curator. The underlying and ongoing themes of their collaboration consider sadness, exhaustion, awe and balance. Their work often involves documentation of themselves and their two children interacting in a variety of landscapes; their current work uses the archetypal children’s playground as a design reference and a particular setting for field studies and experimentation.

This year’s recipients will also be part of the upcoming 20th anniversary exhibition at MAMA, Albury. The exhibition officially opens on Saturday 23 September and runs from 14 September to 22 October 2017 with funding from the Windmill Trust, Create NSW and support by both MAMA and NAVA.

Duke Albada was the recipient of the 19th annual Windmill Trust Scholarship for NSW Regional Artists of $5,000.

In September 2016, Albada will be Artist in Residence at Apollo Estate, a social housing area in East Dubbo, NSW. Her project, ‘Inside Out’, intends to break through a prejudiced perception of people based on their locality, and will reveal how the effected persons perceive themselves. The work will accumulate in an arts trail and photographic publication that will be presented as part of Artlands, the Regional Arts Australia biennial conference returning to NSW for the first time in 14 years. Arts delegates from all over Regional Australia will converge on the city of Dubbo in October 2016.

The Windmill Trust together with the National Association for the Visual Arts were pleased to announce that Harrie Fasher was the 2015 recipient of the Windmill Trust Scholarship of $5,000. From August to October 2015, Fasher worked on research, the development of new work and strengthening of international creative connections via the Wildfjords Artistic Residency, Iceland, followed by a residency at the Suffock Punch Trust, UK, and a mentorship at Butley Mills foundry with artist and caster, Laurence Edwards (Suffolk, UK).

The Trustees are pleased to announce the winner of the 2014 scholarship is James Blackwell. James will use the grant to support his exhibition 'The Native Grid 11' at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre in early 2015.

The Trustees have also supported an Encouragement Award to Rochelle Summerfield. Rochelle will exhibit new work at Brenda May Gallery, Danks Street Waterloo.

Congratulations to James and Rochelle. The assessors noted the continuing high standard of entries for the Windmill Scholarship. Thank you to all of this year's applicants.