Castlemaine Art Museum presents the fouth Experimental Print Prize (EPP). Established in 2019, the biennial, non-acquisitive prize is open to artists residing in Victoria. There is a strong tradition of printmaking in Victoria and the EPP seeks to foster new directions in the field, through both the exhibition of shortlisted artists and awarding of prizes. Unique amongst printmaking prizes, EPP recognises that experimentation and risk are essential to art.

Judges Sally Foster and Melissa Proposch are pleased to announce the following prize recipients: First Prize ($10,000); Highly Commended ($5,000) and Emerging Artist Award ($3,000).

Comments from the Judges:

August Carpenter
The pressure here is immense

This work is a copperplate monotype with chine collé, dipped in beeswax and pierced with pins.

It presses printmaking into a 3-dimensional sensorial, psychological space — from the naturally benign passivity of paper to the quietly and systematically violated. And yet how beautiful it is: how it shimmers; how it fascinates; how it defies easy categorisation; how it feels as though it was always meant to be just so — this poetic torment, this thoughtful, methodical punctuation.

How weighty it has become: this centipedal creature, this army, this mass. And yet how light of foot it still is. See how it balances en pointe on 6500 tips.

Silvi Glattauer
Dissolving landmarks

This work takes photogravure print and bookmaking to its zenith: into the clouds

We find ourselves drifting in cloudscapes made of memories and daydreams: a floating world, a hall of mirrors, a kaleidoscope; or diving deeper into our psyche to visit rocky hollows of the underworld.

We become aware of simultaneous presences and absences. It looks like those houses are reflected in water, but then where is the waterline? Look! There’s the sky on the ground. There’s some gravel in the sky.

Reflections, clouds and caves are playgrounds for the unconscious. Silvi invites us into her hypnogogia, her somnambulism, so that we might fall into memory and daydream with her.

Emily Fong
The stone on my shoulders is chasing light between boulders

This is a multidimensional, participatory work that occupies time and space, that bridges the past and present: 2D tetra pak, drypoint print, 3D printing, and 4D temporality through a photography reel of local landscape and print, and the soundscape of disembodied breath — breath that is rhythmic, yet undeniably human and personal.

We are invited into the artist’s psycho-geographical experience of oneself in the land and the land within us. Locals can speak of the timeless landscape of Dog Rocks at Leanganook: a place where you can feel the presence ancient land spirits; where massive boulders redefine your sense of human scale, presence and perspective.

This is an interactive, relational work. You are invited to hold the stone, cup the ear. Emily asks you to step into a poetic space. She asks for your presence: to listen, to look, to feel and to hold; to find and draw associations between the elements on hand; to imagine and to discover a narrative from glimpses and suggestions, from the clues you have been offered.

Melissa Proposch
8 November 2025

The finalists for 2025 are:

Amanda Morgan, Amy Grover, Andrew Nille, Annie Brigdale, August Carpenter, Aylsa McHugh, Benjamin Bannan, Chelle Destefano, Clare Humphries, Clare McCracken and Heather Hesterman, Chris Orr, Damon Kowarsky, David Lewis, Dianna Wells, Ellie Malin, Emily Fong, Emma Stoneman and Cam Ross, Erica Elgin, Finn Keighley, Greg Somerville, Huiyi Xiao, Ingmar Apinis, Janet Neilson, Jennifer Tarry-Smith, Jinette de Gooijer, John Loane, Justine Mary Philip, Kate Shaw, Kim Barter, Kylie Jayne, Lori Kirk, Margaret Manchee, Matthew Clarke, Melissa Nguyen, Michael Rigg, Peter Ward, Rebecca Murray, Ruth O'Leary, Shirley Ploog, Silvi Glattauer, Simon Klose and Zoe Amor.

2025 Judges

Sally Foster

Sally Foster is Curator, Prints & Drawings at the University of Melbourne. Before joining the University in 2023 she worked at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Canberra, where she was the Senior Curator, Prints and Drawings (2021-2023), and Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books (2016-2021). Prior to this, Sally held curatorial positions in the departments of Prints, Drawings & Photographs at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, and in International Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Melissa Proposch

Melissa is a local artist whose recent work could be described as journeys into the dreamscape of her unconscious. Her landscapes and domestic interiors are as much psychological self-portraits and autobiographical mystery stories, as they are interpretations of the world around her. She returns repeatedly to themes of ghosts and shadows, haunted houses and objects, fortune telling, hidden knowledge, secrets, treasures and unforeseen dangers. She often works with hybrid techniques, bringing together aspects of printmaking, photography, drawing, collage and found objects, in both digital and analogue formats.

Melissa currently works from her studio in Newstead. She is co-director of Artpuff gallery at the Mill in Castlemaine, has previously worked as a master printer, lectured in printmaking and drawing at RMIT, was a founding committee member of Castlemaine Press and publisher of Trouble street press arts magazine.

IMPORTANT DATES
Exhibition Dates: 8 November 2025– 1 March 2026
Announcement of People’s Choice: 1 March 2026