About the Tasmanian
Youth Portraiture Prize

Messages from the
major sponsors

2011 judges

ABAF National Encouragement Award

2010 awards

2011 judges

Jane Haley – CEO ABAF
Jane has extensive expertise in cultural policy, arts management and private sector arts support. She has managed arts organisations in several states of Australia including Arts Access (Victoria), the Queensland Theatre Company, the Arts Council of Australia (ACT) and Sidetrack Theatre (Sydney).

Dr Troy Ruffels – Head of Photomedia at the University of Tasmania (Launceston), artist & curator
Troy is a graduate of the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, and the Glasgow School of Art, University of Glasgow. He and lives and works on the North-West Coast of Tasmania.

Troy Ruffels' practice engages print and digital media in an exploration of the poetic potential of urban environments. His work investigates ways of communicating the insights and relationships gained through environmental interaction, and the visual language that evolves through the process of translating this experience into imagery. Ruffels' specific area of interest is the 2-D image, for its capacity to explore the poetic discourses between the environments we inhabit as a predominantly urban species and our role as active participants in that environment. His practice crosses disciplines and media, but engages digital media as a platform for convergence.

Wayne Brookes – Artist & visual arts teacher at Hobart College
Wayne is currently undertaking a PhD at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, where he graduated with a Master of Fine Art in 2003.

Wayne Brookes is best known for his hyper-real, baroque interiors. He has likened himself to a plastic surgeon for his use of acrylic in his paintings, which he describes as 'postcard facsimiles of the actual space'. The works allow varying levels of interpretation and misinterpretation by the viewer as they attempt to reconcile these impossible, ultra-perfect replications. The work transcends realism and evokes a sense of virtual hallucination within a facsimiled vision of an apotheosis. Brookes' paintings are held in the collections of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the University of Tasmania Fine Arts Gallery, Hobart; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; and private collections in both Australia and the USA. He is represented by Despard Gallery, Hobart.