SAMMY HAWKER

Every two years the National Photography Prize offers an opportunity to consider the vital role of photography in contemporary art in Australia. The National Photography Prize brings together artists from across Australia who are developing and challenging photographic language and techniques.

Generously supported by the MAMA Art Foundation, the National Photography Prize offers a $30,000 acquisitive prize, the $5000 John and Margaret Baker Fellowship for an emerging practitioner, and further supports a number of artists through focused acquisitions.

The Prize provides a forum for artists working with photography to present cohesive selections of work, or works in series, offering a depth of critical reflection that recognises the complexities and nuances of the history of the photograph and its contemporary manifestation.

In consideration of the medium's fluid history, the National Photography Prize encourages artists working across all areas of the photographic field to enter. This includes artists working in traditional forms of light based, chemical production through to those dealing with hybrid and expanded fields of photography and image making.

The 2024 National Photography Prize finalists include leading Australian artists and collectives Alex Walker & Daniel O’Toole, Ali McCann, Ali Tahayori, Ellen Dahl, Ioulia Panoutsopoulos, Izabela Pluta, Kai Wasikowski, Nathan Beard, Olga Svyatova, Rebecca McCauley & Aaron Claringbold, Sammy Hawker, and Skye Wagner.

Judge
Nici Cumpston OAM, Artistic Director, Tarnathi and Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at Art Gallery of South Australia.

Finalist selection panel
Bala Starr, Director, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo
Tiyan Baker, 2022 National Photography Prize Winner
Nanette Orly, Senior Curator, Murray Art Museum Albury

Winners
Ellen Dahl was the recipient of the prestigious Murray Art Museum Albury National Photography Prize 2024.

Olga Svyatova was the recipient of the John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship and will receive a cash award of $5,000 for their work, Они/They, 2022.

Material Resonance [beyond the veil]

Chromatography is a photographic process invented in 1900 and commonly used by scientists to understand the chemical makeup of soil. Sammy Hawker has been testing the process’s capacity to facilitate the visual expression of a wide range of vibrant matter. Expectations must be set aside, as the hues and patterns that form as the solution spreads over the silver nitrate-soaked paper cannot be predetermined or controlled.

In Material Resonance [beyond the veil] the chromatograms speak to the memory inscribed within materials. A chromatogram made with drowned caterpillars found in a trough has the ethereal markings of a moth wing. A chromatogram made with a dehydrated placenta feels like life bursting forth out of an abyss. The artist also receives requests from those who wish to memorialise the lives of loved ones. This series is bookended by a chromatogram made with the ashes of a stillborn baby and a chromatogram made with soil from environmental philosopher Val Plumwood’s natural burial grave.

These chromatograms raise questions about a person’s ability to express themselves from beyond the veil. Disintegration can also be thought of as metamorphosis and sometimes it feels like the essence of a material (or being) is not necessarily tied to form. A notion as mysterious and effervescent as a chromatogram made with water from a sinkhole within the forest of takayna.

The artist acknowledges Caterpillars in Metamorphosis was created on Wiradjuri Country and Chromatogram of Val Plumwood’s grave was created on Walbunja Country. The artist has ongoing relationships with the custodians of these areas and permission to work with materials from Country. Beyond the Veil was created on palawa Country within takayna, lutruwita while the artist was visiting the site to create work for the Bob Brown Foundation. The personal chromatograms have been granted permission to be exhibited publicly.

[excerpt]: Sammy Hawker listens to time through her photographic practice. She amplifies non-human agents, recording their rhythm in resplendent colour and pattern. Her series Material Resonance [beyond the veil] is a sequence of chromatograms - a chemical / photographic process developed in the early 1900's that was used to determine the chemical makeup of soil.

A work in the series at the National Photography Prize is a chromatogram produced from soil located at the natural burial gravesite of Australian ecofeminist and philosopher, Val Plumwood. The alchemical transfer of light and energy that once constituted Val’s activism runs through the soil and transfers itself to the photographic paper in a shimmering outline.