Justine Varga has been announced as the recipient of an honourable mention in the 2026 Bowness Photography Prize for her work ‘Concussion # 1’.
Having suffered a concussion, Justine Varga elucidates the experience in her artist statement: “after many months of convalescing, I finally felt well enough to attempt to give photographic form to my experience. Enacting self-expressive gestures as a series of marks on my negative, and then printing the resulting record at immersive scale, I seek to share not how concussion looks, but how it feels.”
The judging panel, consisting of artist + Bowness Photography Prize winner (2014) Petrina Hicks, Natasha Bullock (Senior Curator Photography, NGV) and Anouska Phizacklea, MAPh Director, selected one winner and two honourable mentions. They observe: “Justine Varga's photograph has a quiet intensity, a work that rewards prolonged looking', and note that the artist's experience is 'echoed here in the fluidity, depth of colour and delicate painterly quality of the surface."
Pictured: Justine Varga, Concussion #1, 2026, chromogenic print, 186 x 136 cm