Small Worlds Sculpture Prize Exhibition 2026
Meet the ARTISTS
Marlena Basser & Mark Grainger
About the artists:
Marlena is an emerging artist exploring and refining her visual language. Working primarily with acrylic on canvas and wood, her practice uses abstraction to express inner experience and is shaped by both the natural world and her internal landscape. Rather than depicting specific places, Marlena creates compositions that evoke how a place feels—its energy, mood and spirit. Her process is intuitive and immersive, which she describes as “dipping into the river of my soul,” allowing colour, shape and pattern to emerge naturally. Marlena embraces abstraction as a language beyond words—one that speaks through feeling rather than logic. Her works invite a quiet dialogue between herself and the viewer, offering space for personal connection and interpretation and becomes less about what is seen, and more about what is felt.
Mark Grainger has been a carpenter for 40 years. In more recent times, he started making artistic pieces like 3 dimensional cutting boards and bird bath stands. After the death of his brother, he was inspired to make “comfort birds” to support people experiencing anxiety. He has donated many birds to Wedgetail Retreat to support people in their final stage of life.
mg_woodwork_uki
Jason Farrow
About the artist:
Jason works in the bush, regenerating rain forests, learning how to identify a Giant Water gum from a White Booyong, removing Devils Figs, battling leeches and ticks and scrub itch. Days spent walking around, looking at trees, and thinking - How do we really respond to our environments?—What happens when we choose a path less traveled by? All of these things, feed into Jason’s practice, his drawing line seems to be softening. Halycon days spent immersed in rolling hills, buttress roots entwined, weaving in and out of the earth. The space between objects has taken on new significance, particularly the way in which light interacts with the face of a shape, and the void. The objects Jason makes are made by hand.
Susan Fell
About the artist:
Susan Fell is a contemporary textile artist, living and creating in her Gondwana Textiles studio, Mullumbimby. Her distinct work sits at the intersection of art and science, with a focus on plant dyes and natural fabrics. Within complexities of materiality, technique and aesthetics, underpinning her work is a deep appreciation of the country on which she lives – Bundjalung country. Her work fits many genres, fine art, visual art, wearables, accessories, and it is with enthusiasm that she welcomes this opportunity of Small Worlds to show the 3D potential of her work, positioning her textiles as that of a mid-career sculptor. Her work is based on years of investigation of traditional and contemporary Shibori, as well as a deep knowledge of plant dyes. Her pioneering research of eucalyptus is unparalleled. Susan has been invited to present at many international textile conferences including UNESCO International Festival of Plants, Ecology and Colour in Antananarivo, Madagascar. Eucalyptus dyes—nature’s own pigments—an alternative aesthetic to synthetic dyes, engage audiences with climate-aware art, critical issues of fast fashion dye pollution in a time of climate crisis.
Sandra Guy
About the artist:
Across both painting and sculpture, Sandra examines the tension between natural and constructed landscapes. Motifs such as expansive skies and familiar regional elements — roads, signage, and agricultural forms — are used to reflect the complex relationship between land use, environmental pressure, and a sense of place. Sandra’s works seek to elevate the ordinary, suggesting that ‘the sublime’ is not confined to untouched wilderness, but is present within lived and altered environments.
Michelle Noordink
About the artist:
Michelle’s artistic journey began in a family deeply rooted in creativity. Growing up surrounded by artists, she was encouraged from an early age to see the world differently. Through this perspective, she developed an ability to find beauty and intrigue in unexpected places. Michelle’s sculptures embrace abstraction and are driven by a strong focus on texture, which she uses to enrich the visual narrative and draw viewers in. Her work explores earthy, organic forms, often inspired by nature. This body of work reflects a fascination with the ocean and the mysterious, rarely seen world beneath its surface.
Suvira McDonald
About the artist:
Suvira McDonald is an artist working with clay, fire and assembled materials in the Northern Rivers of NSW. His practice unfolds through close attention to place, process and the behaviour of materials over time. Working primarily with ceramics, he moves between functional vessels and sculptural forms, allowing each body of work to develop through making rather than predetermined outcomes. Wood firing sits at the center of his studio practice. He is drawn to its pace and unpredictability, and to the way fire, ash and atmosphere leave their trace on the surface of the work. Forms often suggest natural systems—stacked, weathered or eroded—without direct reference, holding a balance between restraint and play.
Helen Otway
About the artist:
Helen is an Australian artist based in the Northern Rivers of NSW. Her practice explores place, memory, and belonging through quiet, materially driven works that sit between painting and object. Working with natural and repurposed materials, Otway creates what she describes as fields of attention— spaces where repeated gestures, marks, and forms gather to hold subtle shifts in environment and experience. Emerging from close observation of coastal and hinterland ecologies, her work reflects the rhythms of tide, light, and seasonal change without directly depicting landscape.
www.helenotway.com
@helenotway_art
Tara Pearson
About the artist:
Tara is a sculptor based in Byron Bay, Northern NSW, whose work is dedicated to exploring the human condition through the lens of classical figurative tradition. After a decade of study at the Byron Bay Sculpture School, Tara recently furthered her technical training at the prestigious Florence Academy of Art in Italy. Her practice focuses on the intersection of gesture and inner life, using ceramic and bronze to capture the vulnerability and quiet strength found in intimate human moments.
Dallas Rae
About the artist:
Dallas is a figurative artist. She takes a critical view of environmental and cultural issues, often referencing Australian colonial history, while exploring the emotional impact of current environmental concerns. More recently she has been exploring nostalgia, by sculpting extinct or endangered animals as well as using a nostalgic form of ‘toy making’ as storytelling in her work. The automata she constructs combine the nostalgia of both a time gone by where ‘toys’ were handmade, along with the story of Australia’s loss.
Sarah Roth
About the artist:
Sarah’s work is an exploration of form, texture, and connection to the natural world. Using stoneware clay and layered glazes, she create sculptural pieces that draw inspiration from the ocean and coral reefs — environments rich with movement, fragility, and resilience.
Rae Saheli
About the artist:
Rae Saheli explores the intersection between random and controlled elements as a result of deliberate and non-deliberate actions. Rae's work is defined by a process in which she uses a 12-gauge shot gun aimed at various supports to create explosive and gestural 2-dimensional and sculptural artworks. Rae’s work represents a synthesis between her passion for the sport of shooting and the power of art to be at once dynamic and beautiful.
Darwin Smith
About the artist:
Darwin is a self-taught wood artist based in Northern NSW, working primarily with timber, exploring organic form, layered construction and the relationship between natural material and living subjects. His work focuses on craftsmanship and translating movement into sculptural form.
Glenn Smith & Katherine Mahoney
About the artists:
Trained in Industrial design Glenn has designed products for brands locally and internationally. In 2013 he turned to creating bespoke objects and furniture to fulfil his passion as a designer maker. He lives in the Tweed Valley NSW, Glenn's achievements include the Govette-Brewster Art Prize in 1976, Dean's prize Queensland University of Technology 1999 and Australian International Good Design Award 2012.
www. glennsmith.com.au
@glennsmithdesignermaker
Katherine is a ceramic artist creating wheel-thrown vessels, tableware and sculptural forms in porcelain and stoneware. Her work is informed by decades of making across the UK, Hong Kong and Australia, and reflects a deep appreciation for the tactile, functional and expressive qualities of clay. Through the rhythm of wheel throwing, Katherine creates pieces that balance simplicity, utility and sculptural presence. Influenced by Asian ceramics and the textures and colours of the Australian landscape, her work ranges from everyday objects to one-off sculptural forms, each made by hand in her Sydney studio.
Dean Stewart
About the artist:
Dean Stewart is an artist and designer with deep roots in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. His family has called this region home for four generations, and he has lived across its communities — Ballina, Murwillumbah, Mullumbimby, and Tintenbar — developing a profound connection to the landscape, its materials, and its stories.
Michelle Walker
About the artist:
Michelle Walker is an earth artist whose 2D and 3D works explore the landscapes we inhabit and the connections they hold in our hearts. Drawing on a creative practice spanning 20 years and an environmental consultancy spanning 25 years, her cross-disciplinary work combines themes of art/nature/science in an exploration of personal relationship to the natural world. Michelle works across disciplines of sculpture, painting, woodworking and metalwork with a focus on found, foraged, reclaimed and grown materials. These natural materials are not simply a passive medium but are active collaborators and storytellers in her work.
Chainsaw Newton
About the artist:
Chainsaw (Christian) Newton is a self-taught woodcarver works in recycled timber on themes inspired by his local environment. He is a regular exhibitor at SWELL and loves to encourage young people to explore their creativity through workshops and classes.
Sandy Weekes
About the artist:
Sandy Weekes is a potter & sculptor from the Far North Coast of NSW Constantly evolving , learning, & experimenting with techniques, materials & firing methods.