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Monisha Kumar received the 2026 Jenny Birt Award for Repealing the Bill.��

The judges commented,��“Kumar’s work impressed with its ability to engage with complex ideas and questions through a refined and confident artistic language. The work captures subtle and entangled human experiences through skilfully rendered facial expressions and body language, while creating layered readings through its use of material substrates.

Representations of gender diversity and trans life are foregrounded, against a backdrop of anti-trans legislation, which is relegated to the background and obscured with layers of paint. This depiction of personal and political struggle is both challenging and affirming - giving form to complex relationships between personal, social, political, and material conditions.”

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Photograph: Anna Kucera

Allyson Brown was highly commended for Boundary St.��

The judges commented, "Brown’s work is commended for its ability to reorient and disrupt colonial power structures through a contemporary visual language. Brown’s work combines familiar formats from urban signage with Wiradjuri designs to prompt new understandings of how urban infrastructure, signage, and the built environment continue to reinforce racialised structures of permission and control. The work is indicative of an artist developing a strong artistic voice with potential to grow into the future."

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Photograph: Anna Kucera

Mila Piccardi was highly commended for��My Second Home Is In My Stomach.��

The judges commented, "Piccardi’s work has a strong family energy, evoking experiences of sharing meals, recipes, and conversations with loved ones. The overall composition resembles the chaotic energy of a family kitchen and its central element, the fridge - complete with fridge magnets, recipes, images, and notes. The refined colour palette helps to unify the diverse materials in the work. There is also humour and pleasure in this work, particularly through its mixing of unexpected iconography and through the subtle ‘everyday’ details of its various elements."

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Photograph: Anna Kucera