Victoria-based Kat Parker has won the $15,000 acquisitive 2026 Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award for Discarded, 2025 – a delicately constructed life-sized paper sculpture that memorialises and informs.
Kat Parker, Discarded, 2025, ink and watercolour on Australia Through Time pages, UV resin, MDF, boxboard and glue and layered linocut prints, 19.5 x 40 x 11.15cm / Winner of the 2026 Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award supported by Michael and Emily Tong / Photograph: Fiona Hamilton / Image © and courtesy the artist
Selected from forty-three finalists, Parker’s sculpture is of the now-extinct Northern Pig-Footed Bandicoot – one of only two marsupial species (both extinct) to evolve hoof-like feet and lost due to habitat destruction and predation by cats and foxes. The work was created by layering linocut prints on secondhand book pages. Daniel Agdag was Highly Commended and Lucie Billingsley won the inaugural Emerging Sculptors Award.
Deakin University Art Gallery
Until 9 October 2026
Melbourne
