People's Choice
See something you love? Vote for your favourite artwork in the People’s Choice Award and be part of the exhibition story.
ONE VOTE PER PERSON | Drawn Sat 21 Feb | $500.00 Winning Artist
Sponsored by Emma Read Artist
Ilfracombe
Abbey Dolgner | Western Skies
Student Photographer
This image captures the vast drama of a western plains sunset, where layered clouds ignite with gold and amber light above a flat, uninterrupted horizon. The wide composition emphasises scale and openness, inviting the viewer to pause and absorb the atmosphere of the moment.
Ilfracombe
Abbey Dolgner |Barbed Sunset
Student Photographer
A shallow depth of field draws the viewer into a quiet outback boundary line at dusk, where twisted barbed wire sits in sharp focus against a wash of glowing colour. The fading sun spills warm light across the horizon, turning an everyday rural object into a sculptural foreground element.
Yaraka
Anne-Maree Lloyd | Goyder's Lagoon
Professional Photographer
From above, the landscape reveals itself as a living network of water and growth. Branching channels carve dark, organic lines through vivid green vegetation and seasonal grasses, forming patterns that resemble veins or root systems. This aerial study highlights the hidden structure of the floodplain, where water movement shapes habitat, colour, and texture across vast distances.
Longreach
Debbie Marinac | Painted Skateboard Decks
Sculptor & Painter Professional
Working across reclaimed skateboard decks, Debbie Marinac transforms functional objects into narrative painting surfaces. Each board presents a distinct visual story, drawing on outback life, identity, industry, and place through bold colour, silhouette, and symbolic imagery. The curved deck format becomes part of the composition, guiding figure placement and horizon lines.
Longreach
Deborah Walsh | Travellers Wagon
Potter Hobbyist
This ceramic sculpture offers a playful take on the classic Australian image of the dog in the tucker box. A hand built wagon is filled with everyday travel items, produce, and a resting dog, capturing the spirit of life on the move. Detailed surface textures and small narrative elements invite close viewing, rewarding the eye with humour and familiarity.
Longreach
Elizabeth Clark | Those Western Hills
Professional Painter
This painted landscape study captures the open sweep of the Mitchell grass plains and low western hills through warm earth tones and simplified forms. Layered brushwork suggests distance, heat, and dry seasonal light, while scattered trees anchor the composition.
Longreach (Click image full view)
Ella Hall | The Place Stayed With Me
Photographer First Time
Taken just off the highway to Jundah, this photograph reflects a personal connection to the Longreach region and surrounding outback. Wide horizons, soft evening light, and quiet presence shape the scene, capturing a sense of warmth and calm. For the artist, this place marked a turning point, where landscape and community combined to feel like home. The image holds that memory of stillness and belonging in open country.
Longreach (Click image full view)
Ella van Raders | You've Never Seen Me Brave
Potter Hobbyist
This series of three hand built ceramic vessels is made using reclaimed clay in differing colours. Together, the works represent women whose lives are shaped by experiences of violence, sexism, and misogyny. Reclaimed clay is used deliberately, reflecting how women are often expected to accept what is left behind, while also showing the capacity to be reformed, rebuilt, and whole again.
Longreach (Click image full view)
Erica Hamilton | Bronco
Photographer
Created while working as a rural and remote paramedic at country events, this photographic series captures candid moments of outback gatherings and rodeo culture. The images focus on energy, humour, and everyday connection, from dust, motion, and action through to small social rituals.
Longreach
Erica Hamilton |Bush Fun
Photographer
Created while working as a rural and remote paramedic at country events, this photographic series captures candid moments of outback gatherings and rodeo culture. The images focus on energy, humour, and everyday connection, from dust, motion, and action through to small social rituals.
Prairie
Georgie Jonsson | Smoko Break
Charcoal Drawing Emerging Artist
This charcoal work reflects the long standing bush tradition of smoko, a short break in the work day that brings people together for rest, conversation, and simple comforts. Originating in shearing sheds, smoko has grown into a broader ritual built around tea, coffee, and shared food.
Longreach
Jane Solomon | The Isisford Yellowbelly
Painter Emerging Artist
Inspired by the iconic Isisford Yellowbelly sculpture, this painting captures a well loved regional landmark with warmth and humour. Set against the open outback landscape, the work reflects the strong connection between place, community, and local storytelling. The inclusion of native wildlife reinforces the sense of scale and environment, celebrating the character and creativity found throughout Western Queensland towns.
Longreach
Jane Solomon | Stockman's Hall of Fame
Painter Emerging Artist
This painting is part of a series celebrating Longreach and its surrounding landmarks. Stockmans Hall of Fame is depicted as a place of memory and pride, where landscape, history, and identity meet. The work reflects the importance of the Hall as a cultural anchor for the region, honouring the stories of stockmen and women while situating the site within the wider outback environment that shaped them.
Longreach
Doris Hill | Sugar Ants
Painter Emerging First Nations
Sugar Ants reflects patterns found in Country and everyday life, drawing attention to the movement, rhythm, and interconnectedness of the natural world. Using repeated forms and layered dotting, Doris Hill creates a surface that speaks to observation, memory, and place. The work references sugar ants as both a familiar presence and a metaphor for community, resilience, and continuity, grounded in lived experience of Longreach and surrounding Country.
Longreach
Peter Klem | Fruit
Sculptor Wood Turning Hobbyist
Peter Klem works with locally sourced bush timber 'Dead Finish', one of the hardest woods in the world, transforming natural materials into finely crafted sculptural forms. Fruit celebrates the colour, grain, and organic character of Australian timber, with each piece shaped to highlight the unique variations found in the wood itself. Created using traditional woodturning techniques, these forms reflect a strong connection to place, craftsmanship, and the enduring beauty of natural materials.
Winton
Tina Elliot | Sunrise
Photographer Emerging Artist
From the layered colour and stillness of first light to the movement of birds returning against a glowing sky, the works explore cycles of beginning and return. Together, they speak to the calm, balance, and sense of continuity found in Western Queensland’s wide horizons.
Longreach (Click image full view)
Rosie Winterbotham | Mitchell Grass Prairie
Photographer Emerging Artist
A gentle and atmospheric study of Western Queensland’s iconic Mitchell grass country, this pastel work captures the quiet resilience of the landscape. Soft layers of colour and texture evoke the vast plains, where wind-shaped grasses and solitary trees stand as markers of time and endurance. Rosie Winterbotham’s delicate handling of pastel reflects the subtle beauty of the outback, inviting viewers to pause and appreciate the understated rhythm of life on the prairie.
Longreach (Click image full view)
Wayne Bernie| Yella Belly Queen
Painter Emerging Artist
Yella Belly Queen is a deeply personal work for Wayne Bernie, rooted in a family moment that forever tied joy and urgency together. The painting is based on a photograph Wayne took of his wife after she caught a yella belly at the Thomson. Almost immediately after, he rushed her to hospital, where she gave birth to their baby boy.
The act of pulling the fish from the river became, in Wayne’s words, the moment that must have brought their son on.
Longreach
Wayne Bernie | Bulldogging
Painter Emerging Artist
In Bulldogging, Wayne Bernie turns his attention to rodeo practice, capturing the raw energy and commitment of mates preparing for competition. Drawn from photographs of friends training together, the work reflects Wayne’s deep respect for the skill, courage, and trust required in the sport.
Winton
Aaron Skinn | Sunset Tryptich
Professional Photographer
Aaron Skinn is a photographer based in Winton, Queensland, whose work explores light, time, and connection in the outback landscape. Drawn to moments that sit between day and night, he uses natural light and silhouette to capture quiet intimacy and movement against expansive skies.
Winton
Aaron Skinn | Tango Under the Tree
Professional Photographer
Set beneath the iconic Barcaldine Tree of Knowledge at dusk, Tango Under the Tree captures an intimate moment of connection framed by light, architecture, and place. The silhouetted dancers move in quiet harmony as the last warmth of the outback sky fades, transforming a public space into something deeply personal.
Winton (Click image full view)
Dache Geiger | Weathered Like Us
Charcol Emerging Artist
This charcoal triptych presents three close studies of animal form, each panel focusing on texture, structure, and expression through layered mark making. Working in monochrome, the artist builds depth through contrast, pressure, and directional stroke, allowing fur, skin folds, and muscle contours to emerge from shadow. The tight cropping draws attention to detail rather than full identity, encouraging close observation.
Alpha
Roxy Weston | Channel Country
Photographer Emerging Artist
This aerial photograph captures the vast Channel Country as it comes alive with water, revealing intricate patterns carved by seasonal flows across the land. Taken from above, the image highlights the scale, rhythm, and quiet power of this remote landscape, where water briefly transforms the desert into a living network of channels and floodplains.
Alpha (Click image full view)
Roxy Weston | Brophy
Photographer Emerging Artist
This photograph captures Brophy, a legendary boxing promoter whose travelling tent became a familiar fixture across Western Queensland. For decades, the boxing tent brought sport, spectacle, and community together in remote towns, transforming open ground into a shared arena of excitement and connection.
Windorah
Heather Hahn | Norm
Photographer Emerging Artist
This photographic series documents people and moments drawn from Channel Country station life and family experience. The works range from working scenes and cattle movement to intimate portraits that reflect endurance and character. Subjects include long time bush workers, family, and the next generation, with images shaped by lived connection rather than distance.
Windorah
Heather Hahn | Strength
Photographer Emerging Artist
This photographic series documents people and moments drawn from Channel Country station life and family experience. The works range from working scenes and cattle movement to intimate portraits that reflect endurance and character. Subjects include long time bush workers, family, and the next generation, with images shaped by lived connection rather than distance.
Longreach (Click image full view)
Indy Hunt | Mushroom Stage
Mixed Media Student at School
This work grows from a smaller drawing created during the artist’s self described “mushroom stage” of creative interest. After receiving a skateboard deck as a gift, the curved surface became a larger canvas to expand the original idea. Bright colour, bold outlines, and stylised forms create a playful fantasy scene.