CANBERRA photographer Sammy Hawker has carried off the $15,000 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize for her photographic impression of Mount Gulaga on the south coast of NSW.

Hawker, who won a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award for her innovative  work last year, is the third successive Canberra artist to win the prize, following Judy Parker in 2020 and Ian Skinner in 2021.

The award, announced by the Australian Photographic Society, goes to a still work that has been substantially produced by photographic means, including analogue and digital photography, collage and mixed media.

Hawker shot her winning work looking out towards Mount Gulaga (once named Mt Dromedary by Capt James Cook) from the Wallaga Lake headland.

“I processed the negative with ocean water collected from site,” she wrote. “When processing film with salt water the corrosive properties lifts the silver emulsion and the representational image is rendered vague. However, an essence of the site is introduced to the frame as the vibrant matter paints its way onto the negative. A ghost of Gulaga looms behind the abstraction—felt rather than seen.”

Two other Canberra artists made the finals this year, too – Lyndall Gerlach for her works “City-ness #1” and “Contemporary Lifestyle”, and Susan Henderson for “Rain 2”.

“Mount Gulaga” will be acquired and join previous Mullins winners in Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre’s permanent collection.

Contacted in in Broken Hill en route to a photo shoot near Lake Eyre, Hawker declared herself “delighted and excited”.

Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre until August 27. Viewable online here 

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