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This week’s opportunities
Awards and competitions
2025 National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs)
The 2025 NIMAs ceremony will take place on 9 August at Garamilla/Darwin’s Darwin Amphitheatre and nominations are now open. For the first time, the NIMAs will be shared and showcase Indigenous music to international audiences through a global livestream on YouTube.
Nominations close 16 June; learn more and nominate.
2025 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers
Now in its 11th year, this prize is awarded to the best short story up to 3000 words by an Indigenous writer who is 35 years or younger. The 2025 judges are Evelyn Araluen, Nardi Simpson and Mykaela Saunders.
Entries close 27 July; learn more and enter.
Artists are invited to submit works to this year’s Hornsby Art Prize in the categories of painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and sculpture. This year, the total prize money is $23,000 with the major prize worth $10,000. All artworks must have been produced in the past two years and not previously exhibited in an art prize.
Entries close 7 August; learn more and enter.
Commissions
This is a site-specific commission inviting Australia-based artists to respond to Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts’s (PICA) architecture and legacy with a new artwork for transitional spaces, including the entrance, stairwells and mezzanine. An artist fee of $10,000 is available, with up to $10,000 in expenses and up to $5000 in travel covered. The commission is open to artists working in any medium and at any career stage.
Applications close 9 June; learn more and apply.
Voltage 2026 (Vic)
Voltage, presented by Chamber Made and The Substation, is a new commissioning and presentation opportunity for Victorian mid-career or established independent artists working at the intersection of contemporary performance, sound and music. Set to culminate in a public presentation season in September 2026, Voltage offers cash contributions, in-kind producing, production support and dedicated studio access.
EOIs close 23 June; learn more and apply.
Call-outs
Emerging Curator Mentorship 2025
Blindside, in partnership with Next Wave, is calling for emerging curators to join an initiative that will allow them to curate a funded performance-based program. The successful applicant will work with Next Wave CEO Elyse Goldfinch and the program, involving up to three performance-based artists, will be developed and presented by Blindside.
Applications close 9 June; learn more and apply.
The Human Writers, a global storytelling project founded in South Australia, is calling for story submissions from people over 50, with a particular welcome to non-writers, first-time storytellers and anyone with a life well lived. Stories must be 1000 words or fewer and submissions can be published anonymously.
Submissions now open; learn more and submit.
Professional development
25 Water-related AQUAMOTION Art Residencies (International)
The international open call for artists promoted by the project ‘AQUAMOTION’ (as part of the European Program S+T+ARTS) is now open. Artists are invited to create artworks, installations or prototypes addressing themes such as water scarcity, pollution, biodiversity loss and climate resilience. Twenty-five international artists from any discipline will take part in a nine-month residency followed by a four-month scale-up phase hosted in four European regions: Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria and Italy. Selected artists will receive up to EUR€40,000 (AU$70,368).
Applications close 13 June; learn more and apply.
Want more? Visit our Opportunities page for more open competitions, prizes, EOIs and call-outs.
This week’s winners
Visual arts
Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green has been named winner of the First Nations Playable Public Art Sculpture Commission, an initiative of Moonee Valley City Council, Agency Projects and Incinerator Gallery. The sculpture that will form part of the exhibition, The Playground Project, will be shown at Incinerator Gallery from 28 June to 12 October. Both a site of play and learning, Green’s concept was chosen by a panel os six arts industry experts, including Artistic Director and CEO of ACCA, Myles Russell-Cook, who says, “The abstracted oyster form allows the sculpture to tell the story of the health and history of these lands and waterways. The work is a beautiful object that responds to the site without competing with it. At the same time, it carries an indelible commitment to fostering the knowledge embedded within Aboriginal custodianship of Country.” Green says: “This commission has allowed me to honour the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River which has held me for most of my life, while being able to contribute something joyful, grounding, and enduring to public spaces.”
Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE) will welcome artists Bryce Cawte, Stephanie Doddridge and Lottie Emma to its 2025-26 ACE Annual Studio Program, and Jingwei Bu as the recipient of the 2025 ACE x firstdraft Short-term Residency. Cawte, Doddridge and Emma will embark on a fully-funded studio residency for 12 months, including 24/7 access to their studio above the ACE Gallery, curatorial mentorship, networking opportunities and participation in ACE’s live programs. Meanwhile, Bu will take part in a three-month, project-based residency at ACE followed by a solo exhibition at firstdraft gallery. Bu will be supported with an artist fee, materials budget and travel bursary.
Australian artists Cressida Campbell AM and Guido Maestri have been awarded the 2025 National Art School Fellowship, NAS’ most significant honour. Campbell has established herself as one of Australia’s most prolific contemporary artists through her 40-year practice, with a major survey of her work held at the National Gallery of Australia in 2022-23. Campbell says, “I am really honoured to become a Fellow of the National Art School. Most artists in any field have nervous temperaments and to start your creative life within the beautiful sandstone walls of the National Art School amongst supportive souls is a great start to wherever your life takes you.” 2009 Archibald Prize winner Maestri is widely regarded for his expressive, gestural works exploring the natural world, ancient ecosystems and the cycles of nature. Maestri says, “It’s an incredible honour to be added as a Fellow among such inspiring artists that I respect and have admired for so long. There is a momentum and energy that I got from my time at the National Art School that is still with me today.”
The 54th Omnia Art Prize has announced Melissa Boughey as winner of the $15,000 major prize for State of Flux, Symbiosis, an oil and beeswax abstract landscape painting. Guest judge Sophie Travers noted the “wild and joyous energy” of the piece, added that it’s “uninhibited by conventions and norms”. Hamish Donaldson took out the $5000 small sculpture prize with a work of blown and engraved glass, Azura. The artist describes the work as a “reflection of temple spaces, speaking to structures and spaces we hold as sacred and that stand to connect us deeper within ourselves and to the unseen dimensions”.
A custom-printed Chiffon curtain spanning over six metres in length has won the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025. The piece, by Jemima Wyman, is part of a series of Haze curtains that function as “ideological textiles”, which the artist describes as textiles that carry political ideas. The collage of protest smoke is sublime to behold, almost appearing heavenly before viewers decipher the origins of these photographs. 2025 award judge, CEO of Murray Arts Museum Albury, Dr Blair French says, “The work conveys the fury, the energy and the interconnectedness of the contemporary world through a form with associations to various histories of textile print – fashion (clothing as both display and disguise), interior design [and] public proclamation.” The Highly Commended Ruth Amery Award went to Elisa Jane Carmichael for Mirrigimpa (2024).
Performing arts
Michele Lee has been awarded the 2025 Griffin Award for outstanding new Australian playwriting for her play, Snappy. Lee receives a full play commission worth $17,700 with dedicated in-house development support from Griffin. Declan Greene, Artistic Director of Griffin Theatre Company, says, “Griffin-goers know Michele from her brilliant, ruthlessly intelligent play Rice – but Snappy presents a whole other side to her talent. It’s a funny, heart-aching story of mid-life disquiet and sexual transgressions. I’m thrilled that we get to go on this journey with Michele and Snappy – thanks to our friends at the Copyright Agency and Sydney Writers’ Festival.”
Sheridan Harbridge has been named Sydney Theatre Company’s next Patrick White Fellow, a year-long role that will see her develop a new work for STC and mentor participants in STC’s Watershed: Writers program. The announcement follows Harbridge’s recent success at the Green Room Awards, where the musical My Brilliant Career, for which she co-wrote the book with Dean Bryant, garnered five awards. Harbridge says, “When Mitchell Butel asked me to be STC’s new Patrick White Fellow, it felt like I was being invited home. As an actor, we throw ourselves into these intense, fleeting families when making a show and then it’s over. I’m so grateful to join this family and this Company.” Karolina Ristevski is the STC’s 25th Patrick White Playwrights Award winner for her play, River Was Here, described as ‘an accomplished portrait of human trauma’. Ristevski says, “River Was Here is the most vulnerable, ambitious, rawest and riskiest thing I’ve written, I had to crack myself open to write it. So, to have it acknowledged in this way is both humbling and empowering, not only for me, but for other playwrights taking risks and trusting that bold, intimate work has a place.” Learn more.
All
Close to $17 million annual multi-year funding will be distributed to 82 arts and cultural organisations as part of Create NSW’s Arts and Cultural Funding Program. Among the recipients are Byron Writers’ Festival, Cementa, Newcastle Writers’ Festival, FLING Physical Theatre, Flying Fruit Fly Circus, Outback Theatre for Young People and Spaghetti Circus. Service organisations receiving funding include NSW Aboriginal Culture Heritage and Arts Association Inc, Accessible Arts, Australian Plays Transform, Diversity Arts, NSW Writers’ Centre, National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and the Royal Australian Historical Society. Learn more.
Check out previous Opportunities and Awards wraps for more announcements.
