Patron and Judges
Jade Oakley – Patron and Judge
Ravenswood Alumni Jade Oakley is an artist who creates works that connect communities to their environment.
Jade has worked as a public artist for 15 years, making sculptures that explore nature and provide moments of reflection and discovery in the urban environment. Jade creates delicate, joyful artworks in her studio practice, which are adapted to become enduring public artworks. Jade is intimately involved in the process, collaborating with architects, designers and fabricators to transform the artwork made with her own hands into large-scale sculptures through sophisticated, innovative fabrication processes, without losing the ‘magic’ of the original work.
Jennifer Turpin – Judge
Jennifer Turpin, a Ravenswood Alumni, is an environmental artist who has created award-winning public domain artworks at the interface of art, science, nature and the built environment for over 20 years. Many of these works are a collaboration with artist Michaelie Crawford.
Working with nature’s elemental energies, the artworks engage water, wind and light as sculptural media. They are rhythmic, responsive and transformative ‘performances’ in the everyday life of the city. Playful and contemplative, the artworks make visible the invisible and highlight the elemental forces of nature so often taken for granted.
The environmental projects are both permanent and temporary and often involve the extensive participation of local communities. The participatory projects are highly collaborative, multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted and incorporate educative as well as art outcomes.
Jennifer and the Turpin + Crawford Studio team work with scientists, engineers and specialist designers and fabricators to realise their innovative sculptural projects. Jennifer has participated in numerous public domain design teams in Australia and internationally in the roles of artist, curator and cultural planner.
Kathryn Hendy-Ekers – Judge
Ravenswood Alumni Kathryn Hendy-Ekers is the Visual Arts Curriculum Manager at the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, responsible for the Visual Arts and Media curriculums from Foundation to Year 12.
Kathryn trained in NSW at the College of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Education and Master of Education. She is an experienced educator, with teaching experience in primary and secondary schools in Victoria, interstate and in south-east Asia.
She has developed an interest in the relationships between curriculum and the arts industry through teaching and learning in art galleries and museums, and is also interested in the role of artists working in schools. Most recently, Kathryn has been working on the implementation of the Victorian Curriculum and the development of whole-school arts education programs. She is currently studying a PhD in visual arts education and curriculum development in art museums and galleries with Charles Sturt University, Bathurst.
Kathryn Minkley – Judge
Kathryn Minkley is a visual arts practitioner, educator and the Head of Visual Arts at Ravenswood School for Girls.
Kathryn qualified with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the former Alexander Mackie College of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Secondary Education (Visual Arts) from the University of Technology Sydney.
She is an experienced educator and artist and has a passion for Australian contemporary Indigenous art. Kathryn believes in the importance of creativity and for today’s students to develop an understanding of diverse cultures through visual arts.
Lara Merrett – Guest Judge
Lara Merrett is an artist who works within an expanded field of painting, with a deep understanding of the interplays of colour. The artist imagines all the ‘geographies of space, atmosphere and physicality’, layering and pouring water-based materials directly in a process.
The artist and works are always driven in part by their material exigencies, but so too by their conceptual sources drawn from literature, nature, community and activism in protection of the natural environment.
Lara often works in-situ, intuitively responding to the physicality of her surrounding space and architecture. In 2018, she was commissioned for the Jackson Bella Room at the MCA Australia and in 2019 by the University of Queensland Art Museum to produce High Stakes – a two-part project culminating with a large installation inside the museum.
Lara’s work is held in numerous public collections, including those of the University of New South Wales, Artbank, Bundanon, Macquarie Bank, Sofitel Hotel and UBS Australia.
Lara Merrett was the Professional winner of the 2022 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize.
Katrina Collins – Guest Judge
Ravenswood Alumni Katrina Collins is a passionate art educator and artist. With a Bachelor of Art Education and a post-graduate degree in painting, Katrina has held dual roles as a practising artist and art educator in a wide range of contexts for 40 years.
Katrina has a keen interest in contemporary art practice and in particular in the artwork made by women. Katrina was head teacher of visual arts at SCEGGS Darlinghurst from 1989 to 2019 and has taught and mentored countless students who now populate the world of visual arts as artists, art educators, academics, curators, film-makers, architects and designers, in Australia and overseas.
With her art practice travelling alongside her active role in art education, Katrina has vast experience of the process of art-making, and curating and hanging art exhibitions. Katrina was awarded the Emerging Artist Prize in the inaugural Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize in 2017 and is now devoting all her time to painting.
