Finalists named for 2026 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging)

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Virginia Keft, Charles Levi, Tia Madden, Amelia Skelton, Sue Jo Wright and collaborative duo Natasha Dubler and Caitlin Dubler, have been selected as finalists to present work in 2026 for the prestigious fellowship program, culminating in a highly-anticipated exhibition at Artspace in July.  

The annual NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) program, delivered in partnership between Artspace and Create NSW, has been a long-standing and successful platform for nurturing NSW’s emerging visual artists. 

With mentorship and support from Artspace’s curatorial team, the seven artists will present work to a panel, earning them valuable feedback and engagement with the contemporary visual art sector and with wider audiences through the 2026 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) exhibition.  

One finalist will be selected to receive the $30,000 Fellowship to undertake a 12-month self-directed professional development program to further challenge and expand their practice. The Fellowship recipient will be announced at the official opening of the 2026 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) exhibition in July 2026.   

Recent recipients of the Fellowship include Ali Tahayori (2025) Gillian Kayrooz (2024), Morgan Hogg (2023), Eddie Abd (2022), and Dennis Golding (2020). 

Find more information about the 2026 Visual Arts Fellowship Emerging program.

Create NSW Executive Director Kerri Glasscock said:  

“Congratulations to this year’s impressive shortlist - Natasha and Caitlin Dubler, Virginia Keft, Charles Levi, Tia Madden, Amelia Skelton and Sue Jo Wright. It’s wonderful to see such high-calibre talent spanning diverse and dynamic practices, which carries on the 125-year legacy of this prestigious fellowship program. 

“Guided by Artspace’s curatorial expertise and mentorship, this fellowship provides a pivotal opportunity for these artists to develop their practice and step into the spotlight to showcase the future of NSW contemporary visual art.” 

Victor Wang, Executive Director, Artspace said:  

“Artspace is incredibly proud to continue our long-term partnership with Create NSW on a fellowship that champions the next generation of artists. 

“At Artspace, that’s our whole mission — standing with artists from the very beginning and walking with them as their practices grow, morph, and leap into new territory. 

“This year’s finalists embody a remarkable shift in how emerging practitioners are thinking with materials and the poetics of the sensory. We’re excited to work closely with them as the 2026 exhibition takes shape.” 

Biographies of Shortlisted Artists 

Natasha Dubler and Caitlin Dubler are sisters and collaborators working between Dharug and Gadigal lands in Sydney. Their installations combine kiln-formed glass and multichannel sound to explore ideas of impermanence, sensory ambiguity, and a poetics of fog. Drawing together processes of craft and experimental sound, they trace the temporal and climatic histories embedded in materials. Each installation unfolds as a sculptural, performative space responding to the shifting dynamics of its site. 

Dr Virginia Keft (Muruwari artist) works across weaving, textiles, sculpture, painting and installation on Dharawal Country. Grounded in matrilineal knowledge, her practice draws on fibre, timber, gum leaves and natural materials to explore care, continuity and the flying fox as a cultural and ecological story-holder. Her works are held nationally and internationally; in 2025 she exhibited in Munich and was a NATSIAA finalist. She produces bangawarra Art Yarns at the MCA and sits on the Firstdraft Board. 

Charles Levi is a textile and embroidery artist whose practice reimagines the queer archive and the nuances of bodily labour through spectacular embroidered works. Using allegory, referential imagery and heraldic symbolism, his works are layered with gestures and codes that unfurl like complex costumes or flags, championing the experience of the queer subject across history.   

Tia Madden is an interdisciplinary artist based on Dharug land, Blue Mountains. Her expanded, installation-based drawing practice explores the porous boundary between drawing and writing, the poetics of illegibility, and the potential for abstract marks to behave communicatively when framed – or misread – as language. Part speculative-fiction and part riddle, her work combines traditions of abstraction with material histories of writing to create vessels for communication— even if they only speak in worlds outside our own. 

Amelia Skelton is an artist living and working on Gadigal Land (Sydney, Australia). Skelton’s practice is grounded in a methodology of working slowly and critically through material culture. She is interested in the things we choose to keep, collect, and throw away. Skelton’s practice sits with the multiplicity of these things, interrogating their abundance, familiarity and significance, exploring how our things can aid us in understanding aspects of the world. 

Sue Jo Wright is a Deaf artist based on Dharug and Bidjigal Country. Working across textiles, photography and video storytelling, her practice centres on Auslan and explores identity, belonging and Deaf culture, which is often overlooked. She has exhibited widely, including Labyrinths of Signs at Firstdraft, Signs of Time at Woollahra Gallery and Dinner Table Syndrome at the Australian Design Centre. A six-time Fisher’s Ghost finalist, Sue is also a respected arts consultant and educator.