Regional Arts NSW and The Windmill Trust recently announced that the 2025 Windmill Trust Scholarship for regional NSW artists has been awarded to Shan Turner-Carroll.
Turner-Carroll is a queer, Australian artist of Burmese descent, currently based in his hometown, Lovedale, on the lands of the Wonnarua people. Through photography, sculpture, installation and performance, Turner-Carroll explores the interaction between the human and non-human world, making work that can “. . . sing to snakes, signal with extra-terrestrials, and barter with islands, rivers, and oceans.”
Shan Turner-Carroll, Bodies On A Rock, 2020, installation, sculpture, video, performance. Photograph: MRAG, NSW
Turner-Carroll has been awarded the Windmill Trust Scholarship to develop a body of work for a solo exhibition at Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle NSW 2300, from 26 September 2026 to 31 January 31 2027. This work will consider the implications of the resurgence of global interest in space travel. “This fascination with extra-terrestrial life and the quest for space exploration reflects humanity’s innate curiosity and desire for connection beyond our planet.”
Established by Primrose Moss in 1997 in memory of the artist Penny Meagher, the Windmill Trust Scholarship was born out of a desire to offer support to Australian visual artists living outside NSW metropolitan areas to advance their careers. It will greatly assist Turner-Carroll as he progresses from an emerging to a mid-career artist.
On receiving the scholarship, the artist said, “I’m just so thankful and honoured. There’s many wonderful people in the past who have received it, and so I feel really lucky to be sitting amongst them. We need a lot of dialogue to move forward and to keep questioning and challenging and rewriting our future. And that’s only going to happen with hearing diverse voices through opportunities like this.”
The 2025 Windmill Trust Scholarship assessors noted, “Turner-Carroll’s application showed evidence of a well developed artistic practice with a strong conceptual framework. His detailed and quirky proposal caught the assessor’s interest, and the time for experimentation and skills development that the scholarship will afford him to undertake promises to deliver future works of an outstanding quality.”
The Windmill Trust Scholarship for Regional NSW artists will be open again for applications in 2026.
