UNSW’s School of Art & Design celebrates the creativity of the graduating class of 2025 at The Annual.
Australia’s biggest celebration of emerging art and design talent opened this week. The Annual 2025 brings together 170 graduating artists, designers and makers from UNSW’s School of Art & Design, presenting bold new work across a wide-range of disciplines. The exhibition is presented across the UNSW Paddington campus until 14 December and can also be seen online.
From 3D visualisation and animation to ceramics, drawing, experience design, game art, graphics, installation, interaction design, jewellery, moving image, object design, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, sound art, textiles and visual effects, the incredible variety of works on display reflect the School of Art & Design’s distinctive breadth of interdisciplinary practice.
“This year's Annual coincides with the celebration of 50 years of our school here in Paddington. A school that has been the launchpad of some now well-known Australian artists, people like Del Kathryn Barton, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Julia Gutman and Jordan Gogos, to name just a handful,” says Head of School Professor Alison Gwilt.
“Judging by the work on display, this graduating class is also set to make their mark. There is an incredible diversity of practices in this exhibition, and they provoke viewers to think and engage with big ideas. Art is such an important way that society makes sense of itself.
“I wish all our students great success as they graduate to become the next generation of creative leaders, artists, designers and makers, both in Australia and overseas.”
The Annual 2025
Sin Wai Zheng, ‘Press Sense’ 2025.
Jennifer Fernandez, 'Untitled' 2025.
Seren Wagstaff, 'Passenger Princess' (2025)
Harrison Mäe, ‘A Colorbond fence stands between you and I’ 2025.
Redherring, ‘Queering the Straight Line’ 2025.
Anisha Sawaid, 'Wollemi Weave' 2025.
Jasmine Duan, ‘Coze in Progress’ 2025.
Miyanda Hamalala, ‘SixStar’ 2025.
Yuan Wan, ‘Chapter 57’ 2025.
Media enquiries
For enquiries about this story and interview requests, please contact Fergus Grealy, External Engagement Coordinator, School of Art & Design.
Email: f.grealy@unsw.edu.au
Winner – TWT Excellence Prize
Sin Wai Zheng, Bachelor of Design (Honours) graduate, was awarded the 2025 TWT Excellence Prize, which goes to an outstanding graduating creative practitioner across all disciplines. The prize includes $3000, studio space at the TWT St Leonards Creative Precinct for one year, and mentorship from a precinct artist.
Zheng’s design focused on improving mental health and brings together fashion, technology and wellbeing. Press Sense (2025) is a collection of fashion devices for the regulation of young people's generalised anxiety disorder.
“When persistent uncertainty develops into chronic anxiety, it can fluctuate throughout the day. This project offers a range of wearable coping aids to facilitate the self‑regulation of heightened anxiety,” says Zheng.
Each adornment applies acupressure according to the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine, offering non‑invasive relief by targeting pressure points that relieve anxiety.
“Press Sense aims to reestablish the bridge between mind and body through the exploration of wearables for mental health,” says Zheng.
The 2025 TWT Excellence Prize judging panel, which included Barbara Moore (CEO, Biennale of Sydney), Dr Fernando do Campo (School of Art & Design) and Chloe Cassidy (School of Art & Design) praised the project’s conceptual rigour and social impact.
“The work challenges broad expectations of jewellery practices through its consideration of the body as both the site for the objects to be animated, and as the benefactor of the sculptural forms offering acupressure to relieve impacts of anxiety,” the judges said.
“The pairing of Traditional Chinese Medicine principles with modern technology has been researched, developed and communicated exceptionally well. This proactive and aesthetic approach to addressing complex challenges demonstrates the positive impact creative practitioners can have in society.”
Highly commended:
- Jennifer Fernandez, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), Untitled (2025)
- Seren Wagstaff, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), Passenger Princess (2025)
Winner - Ross Steele AM Fine Arts Prize
Seren Wagstaff, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) graduate, was the winner of the 2025 Ross Steele AM Fine Arts Prize for their work Passenger Princess (2025).
This prize recognises exceptional work in contemporary art practice and includes a $3000 bursary.
Wagstaff works across sculpture, installation and performance, and their prize-winning installation evokes tensions and intimacies within blue‑collar environments.
“My practice is motivated by working‑class material cultures and the queer innuendoes embedded within them,” says Wagstaff.
“I integrate documentary‑style strategies into sculpture to produce installations that present as re‑imagined artefacts of research, collaboration and public experiments. Responding to the formal and informal economies of regional automotive, fishing and farming cultures, I work with industrial materials, found objects and mechanical systems to expose the tensions, irony and unexpected intimacies within blue‑collar environments.”
Judges Professor Felicity Fenner and Dr Jaye Early, of the School of Art & Design, described the work as conceptually rich and formally assured.
“Together, the three objects comprising their installation are conceptually haunting, conveying an uneasy ambiguity between quotidian and menacing narratives,” the judges said.
“The experimental precariousness of the work brings vernacular and personal experience to a lineage of 20th‑century sculptors such as Louise Bourgeois, Rebecca Horn and Sarah Lucas.”
Highly commended:
- Harrison Mäe, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), A Colorbond fence stands between you and I (2025)
- Redherring, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), Queering the Straight Line (2025)
Winner - Frost* Design Prize
Anisha Sawaid, Bachelor of Design (Honours) graduate, received the 2025 Frost* Design Prize for Wollemi Weave (2025), a work that merges slow craft with creative coding to engage audiences in environmental stewardship.
The $3000 prize, from the Frost*collective, is awarded to a Design graduate who demonstrates originality, experimentation and critical enquiry in their work.
In this piece, “I focus on the connections between weaving and creative coding through data visualisation,” says Sawaid.
“I reinterpret the process of weaving cloth by exploring new techniques, processes and applications of motifs to highlight the relationship between slow craft and digital systems.”
The judging panel of Nicola Mansfield (Head of Brand, Frost*collective), Dr Haider Akmal (School of Art & Design) and Dr Bic Tieu (School of Art & Design) commended the project’s beauty and relevance.
“The textile pieces are beautifully crafted – using data, design and detailed making to elevate the issue of the revival and conservation of the Wollemi Pine in the public realm,” they said.
“The correlation of two different ways of thinking – digital and analogue – is both original and profound, and engages us in a contemporary conversation about the importance of our relationship with nature at a critical time for the planet.”
Highly commended:
- Jasmine Duan, Bachelor of Design, Coze in Progress (2025)
- Miyanda Hamalala, Bachelor of Design, SixStar (2025)
- Yuan Wan, Bachelor of Design (Honours), Chapter 57 (2025)
