Meet our Guest Judges for the Talburac Art Prize 2025
We are delighted to welcome our guest judges and look forward to hosting them for the Talburac art prize. Their expertise and unique perspectives will bring great insight to the selection process, and we’re excited to see how they engage with the work of our talented artists.
David Cross
David Cross is an artist, writer, curator and Professor of Visual Arts at Deakin University. Working across performance, installation, video and photography, Cross in his artwork explores the relationship between pleasure, intimacy and the phobic, and often incorporates participation by linking performance art with object-based environments.
As a curator Cross has produced a number of temporary public projects, including One Day Sculpture (with Claire Doherty) across New Zealand in 2008-09, and Iteration: Again, in Tasmania in 2011.
He co-founded the research initiative Public Art Commission (PAC) at Deakin University which is devoted to the commissioning and scholarship of temporary public art.
Recent PAC projects co-developed with Cameron Bishop include Treatment with Melbourne Water and City of Wyndham (2015. 2017, 2024), Venetian Bind with European Cultural Centre, Venice (2019 and 2024), Six Moments in Kingston for the City of Kingston (2019) and Front Beach Back Beach on the Mornington Peninsula (2023) also co-developed with Danny Lacy.
He has written extensively on contemporary art for national and international publications.
To learn more about David visit: www.davidcrossartist.com
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Emily Wakeling
Emily Wakeling is a curator and art writer. She is Curator at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, and previously held positions at Rockhampton Museum of Art, Artspace Mackay, and the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art’s Asian and Pacific curatorium for the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and a historical Japanese collection display.
As a University of Queensland graduate, Emily has a Masters in Art History via the thesis ‘Girls are dancin”: shojo culture and feminism in contemporary Japanese art’ (2010). Working across curating, art writing, and museum learning, Emily spent six years in Tokyo in multiple arts-related roles including Editor of the arts website Tokyo Art Beat.
As Co-director of Brisbane art space Boxcopy, Emily curated a program of local Indigenous and non-indigenous artists as well as All We Can Do is Pray, a group exhibition of Japan-based artists finding parallels between Japanese survivors of World War II and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
Her curatorial projects are spread across Japan and Australia, including solo exhibitions of Archie Moore and Courtney Coombs in Tokyo art spaces, and the Japanese group exhibitions Come Close: Japanese Artists within their Communities at Bus Projects, Melbourne, and the 2021 project Compassionate Grounds: Ten Years on in Tohoku at Composite, Melbourne.
Emily is also a long-serving freelance writer who has contributed to Artforum, ArtAsiaPacific, Japan Times, Tokyo Art Beat, Art Review Asia, Real Tokyo, Eyeline and Art Monthly Australia. Emily currently lives and works on Wadawurrung Country.
To learn more about Emily visit: Emily Wakeling – curating | art writing | museum learning