Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) 2026

Photography Review by Brian Rope

Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) 2026 (Various artists)

Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre (MRAC) - 13 August to 10 October 2026

2026 sees the 8^th Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP), although it had other names in its early years.

The winner of this year’s $30,000 prize is Troy Ruffels for a digital print on Composite Aluminium, titled Architectures of Connection, 2026. It will be acquired and join all previous MCPP winners in the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre (MRAC) permanent collection of post-war contemporary paintings, ceramic and photography.

The artist statement explains the title, telling us that “what usually escapes perception appears as a fleeting architecture of connection.” It shows us fine strands revealing patterns of movement and explores how photography can reveal delicate yet resilient connections.

Troy Ruffels - Architectures of Connection, 2026, Digital Print on Composite Aluminium, 70 × 120 × 3 cm

The adjudicators also Highly Commended Jenny Pollak for ‘A line in the sand’ and Aidan Galeger for ‘Into the Sun’. Those works, and all the other selected finalists and their accompanying artist statements can be seen in a virtual gallery here.

As always when an exhibition’s artworks are by numerous entrants, I’ll now follow my practice of discussing just a selection of other exhibits I found most interesting.

Ann Vardanega’s artwork is part of a project about domestic and family violence. In this piece, the artist has successfully explored the concept of the environment as a place of regeneration. It is excellent to have an artist responding to an incredibly important issue.

Ann Vardanega - Spirit of the Land 2, 2025, digital inkjet print on cotton rag paper, framed

David Bignell’s ‘Reflecting’ looks at a person through an apparently moving train’s window. His concept is that by showing a blurred figure amidst reflections from inside and outside the window, he is showing us something of how our memories are often what determines how we see ourselves. I related strongly to this because reflections in and through windows are a significant part of my own photography - although I have never thought about my work in the way Bignell has done. 

David Bignell - Reflecting, 2026, Inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Gloss 

Another artwork addressing a most important issue is by Julie Millowick. Its title clearly identifies the issue – plastic in waterways being ingested by marine life, thus causing the marine consumer’s death. Noting that plastic pollution has become endemic, the artist photographs plastic bags so they seem to be in waterways and so the created visual beauty hides the toxic impact.

Julie Millowick, Plastic in waterways is consumed by marine life who perceive it as algae or jellyfish_3, 2025, Digital Image, Inkjet print on 100% Cotton Rag

Lilli Waters is a Thai-Australian. Here she has explored her Thai heritage and ancestral mythology. The underwater still-life intertwines plants, flowers, and fish. The resultant meditative scene reflects Waters’ pre-occupation with the natural world in the context of her cultural memory. Essentially an autobiographical landscape, this is a most attractive visual artwork. Printing it on fibre rag adds to its beauty.

Lilli Waters - Nāga’s Lanterns โคมไฟของนาค, 2025, archival pigment print on fibre rag

Peter Charuk’s video artwork engages with a landscape where cane is grown. He has recorded a rapidly changing landscape. The outcome is an excellent contribution to discussion about the significantly important issue of climate change. It challenges us to ask ourselves what the social implications of our human use of the landscape are.

Peter Charuk – Collateral Atmospherics 28 18’ 51’’ S 153 26’ 4’’ E, 2026, single-channel video, colour, sound (stereo)

Rebecca Polonski’s ‘Un-Becoming’ addresses yet another important social issue in today’s world. The artist has done this by using negative images and excluding elements that she did not wish to show. Lichen on one side of the artwork draws our attention away from the face on the opposite side. This portrays the feelings of today’s youth that are overlooked or pushed to the fringes of our crowded world. The artist statement says that over time the cloth on which the piece is printed will weather and the youngster will gradually disappear. Of course, or young selves all do that as we age.

Rebecca Polonski – Un-Becoming, 2026, Pigmented ink on linen

The final exhibit I will mention is by Sandra Barnard. Her artist statement reveals it is a camera-less photograph made by exposing photographic paper inside an enlarger’s bellows. She has put various objects into that space and exposed them directly. In the resultant “reversed” image, the subject has become the film and the print is, in effect, the negative. The artwork references William Henry Fox Talbot's 1844 negative-positive photographic process and, specifically, that artist’s work 'Articles of Glass'

Sandra Barnard - That Might Look Good in My Enlarger II – Cruets CMYKRGB, 2025, Hand printed Chromogenic Photograph

Go see this exhibition if you can. And study the works and artist statements closely online.

This review is also available on the author's blog.

 

 

 

Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) 2025

Photography Review | Brian Rope

Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) 2025 | Various artists

Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre (MRAC) | 14 August – 11 October 2025

As always, it is somewhat difficult to review an exhibition where the artworks are from numerous artists, and the only connection is that they have been selected as finalists in a competition. So, I’ll follow my practice of discussing just a selection of the exhibits, starting with the adjudicator, Antares Wells, awarded pieces.

The winner of this year’s $30,000 is a woman wearing a choker is walking in a crowd, 2024, an inkjet print on cotton rag, inkjet print on clear film 80.5 x 59.4 cm by Johanna Ng. It will be acquired and join all previous MCPP winners in MRAC’s permanent collection of post-war contemporary paintings, ceramic and photography. The prizemoney amount puts this event amongst the major Australian photographic contests.

The work traces what the artist describes as “the parallel erasure of Asian identities in computer vision and network television.” She captured screenshots of Asian bodies then photographed them into new compositions. In this winning image, an Asian woman becomes “a woman” and “a woman” conjures the image of a white one. 

Johanna Ng - a woman wearing a choker is walking in a crowd, 2024

Wells also named two Highly Commended works. They were Miho Watanabe’s Awareness of Between-ness: A Day After My Father’s Departure – Self-Portrait in His Room on His Chair, 2025, and Mungo Howard’s Studio Window, 2025. Watanabe’s artwork is delightful – a self-portrait, taken the day after his father died. Transferred onto silk using a phototransfer technique, the image will gradually fade, mirroring how memory dissolves with time and evoking the quiet passage between presence and absence. I hope I’ll have an opportunity to view this artwork again when that fading has advanced significantly. 

Miho Watanabe - Awareness of Between-ness: A Day After My Father’s Departure – Self-Portrait in His Room on His Chair, 2025

Mungo Howard - Studio Window, 2025

Let me now comment on just a few of the other finalist works in the exhibition. Hilary Wardhaugh is amongst them for the second year running; this time with her work Dad’s Last Swim, 2024.

The artist statement tells us that before scattering her dad’s ashes into the waves at his favourite beach she made a lumen 'portrait' of him using the ashes. She then washed the paper in the sea, leaving sand where his ashes had lain. Wardhaugh always remembers “Dad being sandy and salty at the beach after swimming.” I have no doubt her family will enjoy this clever artwork about Dad for all time. 

Hilary Wardhaugh - Dad's Last Swim, 2024

I must mention Angus Brown’s Torqued Image Object 1, 2024. How many of us who print our images have mounted them on a rolled aluminium sheet? I certainly haven’t. Brown has done that with this pearl-finished silver gelatin print. He tells us that “In an effort to stretch the conventions of image-making outside the flat pictorial plane, I employ the operations of sculpture into the field of photography……. Maintaining the logic of image making, whilst speaking the language of sculpture, these blended outcomes have come to be known as ‘image-object’.”

Angus Brown - Torqued Image Object 1, 2024

There are many other interesting artworks in this exhibition, including Carolyn Craig’s Re/mediate, 2024, which is screen-printed charcoal dust on paper. And Tamara Voninski’s Chemo Decay: Sun Ritual, 2025, a photographic lightbox. She exposed images from her chemotherapy-induced dreams to the same chemo cancer drugs that drip into her veins during treatment.

Carolyn Craig - Re/mediate, 2024

 

Tamara Voninski - Chemo Decay: Sun Ritual, 2025

When reviewing the 2024 MCPP, I said that I considered it to be the best one yet overall. This 2025 exhibition is considerably better again.

All the selected finalists and their accompanying artist statements can be seen in a virtual gallery here. However, it would be a much better experience to visit the MRAC and see the finished artworks up close if you possibly can do so.

A longer review is available on the author's blog here and in the December 25 issue of The Printer here.