I’m pleased to announce that my painting Perfect Enough, from the Monumental Nobodies series, has been selected as a finalist in the 64th Fisher’s Ghost Art Award at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is one of Australia’s long-running art prizes, with more than $60,000 in prize money across its categories. The major Open Award is valued at $50,000 and is acquisitive to the Campbelltown City Council Art Collection. Previous recipients include Elisabeth Cummings, Suzanne Archer, Marion Borgelt, Raquel Ormella, Khaled Sabsabi, Michael Cook and Angela Tiatia.
Perfect Enough takes Emilio Fiaschi’s marble nymph as its starting point, bringing the classical ideal of physical perfection into contact with contemporary ideas of self-image and modification. An embroidered tattoo has been stitched directly over the surface of the oil painting, introducing a deliberately physical intervention into the painted image.
The work considers our compulsion to alter, personalise and improve what is already regarded as beautiful. In an age of filters, cosmetic enhancement and carefully managed identities, the tattoo becomes both decoration and intrusion — a mark of individuality placed where none is required.
It asks a simple question: when perfection is apparently still not enough, what exactly are we trying to improve?
Perfect Enough
Oil and embroidery on canvas 120 × 100 cm 2025
This work was also previously selected as a finalist in The Naked and Nude Art Prize 2025.
The 2026 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is on at the Campbelltown Arts Centre, 1 Art Gallery Road, 2560
26/09 to 04/12/2026
