Three Australian artists awarded prestigious scholarships

Henry Jock Walker (SA), Helen Grogan (VIC) and Hannah Gartside (VIC) have been named the 2025 recipients of the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships. This prestigious program provides each artist with a transformative year-long study opportunity at an international art school of their choice, with $70,000 to cover institutional fees, living expenses and travel costs.

Erica Green, Director of the Samstag Museum of Art, which administers the program, emphasised the impact of the scholarship, calling it “a life-changing professional opportunity.” Green notes, “It enables artists to develop their capacities, skill, and networks outside Australia through a dedicated period of practice-based learning.”

This year’s winners bring diverse approaches to contemporary art, spanning moving image, site-specific installation, textile-based kinetic sculptures, and socially engaged practice. The selection panel, which included Green, former Samstag scholars Michael Kutschbach and Dr. Megan Walch, praised each artist’s unique contributions and potential for growth.

As a surfer, sewer, painter, performer and printmaker, Walker’s work impressed with its vitality and integration of varied artistic practices. His practice has evolved from performative action painting while surfing into colourful, industrially sewn images using neoprene. He is considering an MFA at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, located in the heart of a surfing and skateboarding culture.

Grogan’s installations demonstrate conceptual rigour and precise spatial engagement. Their practice makes the often-unseen structures and processes of power in the gallery, archive and museum visible, questioning and challenging the everyday norms of these cultural institutions.

Gartside’s textile sculptures have a playful, tactile energy rooted in theatrical costume-making. Her startlingly original sculptures and kinetic installations repurpose materials and fabrics, and her practice is underpinned by a feminist ethos. Gartside plans to study an MFA at Sandberg Instituut in the Netherlands, a country known for its rich textile heritage.

Since its inception in 1991, the Samstag Scholarship program has supported 151 artists, fostering new talent and helping alumni establish successful careers worldwide.