Regional Arts NSW and The Windmill Trust are pleased to announce that the 2024 Windmill Trust Scholarship for regional NSW artists has been awarded to Karla Dickens.

A Wiradjuri woman living and working in Goonellabah, on Bundjalung Country, New South Wales, Karla Dickens is a multidisciplinary artist who interrogates aspects of the nation’s history, providing provocative reflections on Australian culture as well as exploring religion, race, sexuality, the environment and motherhood.

A graduate from the National Art School, Dickens has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with works represented in a number of significant national public collections. The Windmill Trust Scholarship will enable Dickens to create new works for an exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery in April 2025.

In a statement about the award she stated: “Being awarded this year’s Windmill Trust Scholarship in memory of Penny Meagher is a sweet lifeline for me at the moment. There are very few artists in Australia not feeling the pressures of the current financial crisis. I am deeply grateful to receive the scholarship which will allow a new series of art works to come into the world.”

The 2024 Windmill Trust Scholarship judges, Megan Monte, Director of Ngununggula, Southern Highlands Regional Gallery and previous Windmill Trust Scholarship winner Dale Collier, selected Karla Dickens from applications from across regional NSW. They particularly commended Dickens for her “clearly defined concepts and project pitch and the high impact outcome for a full-time practicing regional artist with well-articulated need”.

Two other artists, Fiona Lee from Elands in the Mid North Coast region and Natasha Dusenjko from Dalmeny on the NSW South Coast, were noted as highly commended.

Julia Harvey and Victoria Weekes from the Windmill Trust stated: “We are excited about the project proposed by Karla Dickens and her past body of work. The quality of the applications this year was very high and Karla’s win is very well deserved”.

Tracey Callinan, CEO of Regional Arts NSW commented: “We are pleased to see this year’s Windmill Scholarship going to an artist who is so embedded in regional practice and who communicates important stories and issues through her work”.

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.

The Windmill Trust Scholarship for Regional NSW Artists will be open again for applications in 2025.

For further information on the Windmill Trust and previous winners of this award visit: http://www.windmilltrust.org.au/

Photos of works by Karla Dickens:

1. #2 Rise and Fall
   Inkjet prints
   (epson UltraChrome K3 inks on Hahnamuhle Photo Cotton Rag
   Bright White 310gsm paper)
   180 x 120 cm / 120 x 80cm / 90 x 60cm 
2. It’s later then you think
   Inkjet print
   64 x 64 cm
3. There’ll be hell to pay
   64 x 64cm