National Gallery Scholarship Success

We are extremely proud to share that Sarah Stopforth (10 Columba) was selected as one of only 16 students from around the country to receive the highly prestigious National Gallery Art Scholarship (NGAS).

The NGAS sees participants connecting with a creative network of artists, peers and National Gallery staff through online and in-person learning experiences, including a week-long residency at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

This is an extremely competitive scholarship, so it is extremely exciting to see Sarah's hard work and artistry seeing her accepted into this program. Read Sarah's artist statement below:

"My approach on this artwork was to express myself and who I am through everyday objects that mean the most to me. It was to show personality and interests without needing to draw people explicitly. In this work, I used realistic detail and soft colour to represent things connected to my identity, music, creativity, and memories.  My goal for the artwork was to capture the warmth and nostalgia that music brings into my life.

For this piece, I laid out a concert t-shirt, headphones and a vinyl record, each things that I own and associate with my identity and self-expression. I then experimented with different compositions and positioning before drawing the piece with coloured pencil. I built up layers of light yellow and orange, contrasting it against the dark tones of the record and the headphones. The coloured pencil allowed me to utilise control and softness at the same time, helping me bring warmth and emotion into realistic objects.

The concept behind this work is identity, and being able to express through art how music has become part of who I am. Each object represents a part of that. The shirt links to cherished memories of discovering new music and going to concerts and festivals with friends. The record represents my love for collecting music and the memories tied to each album, showing how creativity and emotion can be passed down and discovered through sound, and the headphones represent the private space that music gives me to think, reflect, and feel. Together, they show how personal items can hold emotional value and tell a story about someone's inner world.
I was inspired by the artist Karen LaMonte, whose artwork explores identity through absence. Her sculptures of empty garments show how clothing can express the presence of a person, even when they are not physically there. This idea influenced how I represented the t-shirt in my artwork, a thing that carries traces of its owner and their experiences. Like LaMonte, I wanted to capture how personal identity can live inside material things, and how absence can still communicate presence. Her work helped me realise that art can reflect who we are without showing us directly.

My intention was to express who I am through objects that hold significance to me. The objects in this piece carry stories about memory and identity. I wanted to show how art can capture pieces of who we are and preserve the things that matter most."

Congratulations, Sarah!