August 2025 Honorary Mention Hadley's Art Prize
I received an Honorary Mention from the judges for the 2025 Hadley's Art Prize. The judges commented that work is:
"A complex and multi-layered work, Valerie Sparks' The Long View summons connections across history and disciplines. The allusions to coastlines and ice shelves seems timely and evocative, but it is in the understanding of the process that Sparks uses that intrigues: using highly specialised medical equipment to scan common garden rocks renders them as seemingly monumental, playing very cleverly with perceptions of scale and importance."
June 2025 Turner & Australia Exhibition Gippsland Art Gallery
"A journey through two centuries of epic landscape painting, this unique and compelling exhibition explores both the timing of Turner’s major artistic breakthroughs, which coincided with the development and origins of a school of art in Australia, and his continuing influence on artists working in Australia today.
The exhibition draws a line of influence from Turner’s contemporary John Glover, who migrated to Australia in 1831, aged 64, through to cutting edge contemporary art, and includes within its orbit those who have worked consciously within Turner’s legacy, and those for whom his influence is unintentional and the result of an inherited tradition of European-derived landscape art.
Turner & Australia draws together key works by Turner from Australian public collections, presented alongside a diverse chronology of Australian art that has arisen from the generations that have followed in his path. Included amongst original works by Turner are key works by Australian luminaries such as Eugene von Guérard, Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Clarice Beckett, Jessie Traill, Lloyd Rees, Tracey Moffatt, Tony Smibert, and Valerie Sparks."
GAG Website
May 2025 Hadley's Art Prize
I am very happy to have been selected as a finalist for the Hadley's Art Prize 2025
February 2025 Public Art Commission
Completion of Public Art Commission for Mammography Clinic. Arts Tasmania
December 2024 On Island - Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Prospero's Island South West, and Prospero's Island North East are included in this exhibition. On Island explores connections between artists and the archipelago of 334 islands that make up Lutruwita/Tasmania. It evokes the artists' physical presence here, as well diverse narratives and perspectives about this place.
July 2023 Flourish - Glen Eira Town Hall
Flourish showcases the work of four contemporary artists – Kate Beynon, Kate Rohde, Valerie Sparks and Vipoo Srivilasa in an exhibition focusing on the interconnectedness of nature, storytelling and cultural themes.
Spanning a range of media including digital wallpaper installations, ceramics, watercolours, cast resin sculptures, animation, and soft fabric sculptures, this exhibition interweaves botanical and animal motifs with cultural concepts to investigate our multi-layered relationship with the natural world.
April 2023 Dark Garden - Exhibition Bett Gallery
'Sanctuary’ provides the over-arching concept for a new long-term project. It refers to both the idea of a sanctuary as a space for us to dwell in, as well the spaces people create to provide safety and protection for plants. I am interested in the role the relationship between art and science plays in this symbiotic relationship. These floral panels are the first works to emerge from this project and my residency with Melbourne florist Flowers Vasette.
‘Sanctuary’ involves researching and exploring the lives of key women botanical artists, including Ellis Rowan, Marianne North and Louisa Anne Meredith, who made significant contributions to our understanding of bio-diversity. These floral works pay homage to the achievements of these women, in particular the work of Margaret Anderson Hope (1938-1934), a Tasmanian artist whose work is on permanent display the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
December 2022 Representation Gallerysmith
I am very pleased to announce that I am now represented in Melbourne by Gallerysmith. I first exhibited with Gallerysmith in 2011 as a guest artists for the exhibition ‘Little Bird Big History’. Since this time I have had frequent contact with Marita Smith and have had a high regard for the program and artists she represents at Gallerysmith. I look forward to working with Marita and everyone at Gallerysmith.
August 2022 Commission - French Jewel Box, Block Arcade Melbourne
Working with Kate Challis Interiors to customise Volta 1 for the French Jewel Box in the Clock arcade Melbourne CBD. Photos will be shared soon.
July 2022 Commission - Bendigo Botanic Gardens
The 10 x 3 meter installation for the City of Bendigo new information centre at the Bendigo Botanic Gardens. This large scale, immersive, photographic installation celebrates the beauty and wonder of plants, and is a homage to the work of women botanical artists of the 1800s. In particular I was inspired by the work of Ellis Rowan who’s command of colour and detail is so inspiring.
Thanks to the City of Bendigo, the Bendigo Art Gallery, the Bendigo Botanic Gardens and Flowers Vassette where I photographed some of the flowers included in the work.
May 2021 Winner - St Kevins Art Prize
I am thrilled to be the recipient of the St Kevin’s Art Show 2021 Major Prize judged ‘The Most Outstanding Work in Any Medium’, for Memento Spiritum.
Memento Spiritum was created through assembling CT scans I have conducted of plants. The scans were then processed using the ‘lung’ pre-set of medical imaging software. Using a diagnostic tool for the human body to create a still life, a genre the explores the transience of life and inevitability of death, draws attention to how inextricably bound we are with the life and death of plants. They are the respiratory system of the planet. Vulnerable, ephemeral and beautiful. The presence of the pomegranate nestled in the bottom left of the image is a symbol of fertility and a reminder of the resilience of nature. It is a symbol of hope.
In her speech, judge Catherine Asquith said, “in discerning an overall winner, I was struck immediately by a particular work, which continued to pull me back again and again; it is subtle, elegant, possibly quite dark in mood and emotion, and yet there is some small glimmer of hope wrestling with the overarching theme of transience. This artist has used an unorthodox but thoroughly appropriate method of technique in combination with the genre of still life, to present their interpretation of our ‘inextricable’ connection to the planet, and the need to nurture a “vulnerable, ephemeral and beautiful” nature.“
©Catherine Asquith 2021
May 2021 Finalist - Fremantle Print Award
Memento Spiritum has been selected for the Fremantle Print Award
February 2021 Finalist - Burnie Print Prize
'Sanctuary - Series 1' wallpaper installation has been selected as a finalist in the Burnie Print Prize
August 2020 Finalist - Bowness Photography Prize
'Sanctuary - Series 1' wallpaper installation has been selected as a finalist in the Monash Gallery of Art, William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize. Dates to be announced soon.
December 2019 Sublime Sea: Rapture and Reality
My work 'Prospero's Island - South West' is included in the exhibition 'Sublime Sea - Rapture and Reality'. Curated by Vivien Gaston at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.
"Sublime Sea: Rapture and Reality is a spectacular immersive exhibition about the power of the sea in human imagination. Through superb examples of paintings, sculpture, photography, film and the decorative arts, the exhibition evokes the overwhelming experience of nature, from intrepid journeys and mysterious grottos to the infinite space of the ocean."
October 2019 M Pavilion 3D VR Works in Progress Presentation
Join me for viewing of my 3D Scan Point Cloud works in progress at M Pavilion - Monash University Clayton Campus. I will be on-site 9am – 5 pm 21st– 25th October.
October 2019 Exhibition at Bett Gallery
Solo exhibition at Bett Gallery in Hobart, 18 October to the 9 November. Opening on the 19th of October, 3:30 - 5:30 pm.
August 2019 Banyule Works on Paper Award
I am please to be a finalist in the Banyule Works on Paper Award for my work 'Momento Spiritum'.
July 2019 Finalist Hadley's Art Prize
I am honoured that my work 'Crossing' has been selected as a finalist for the Hadley's Art Prize in Hobart.
May 2019 Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize
I am pleased to be a finalist in the RAW Art Prize for my work 'Pomegranate as a work in progress'.
April 2019 Article in Spanish Architectural Digest
A narrow house with history in Melbourne: Article on the Fitzroy residence of interior designer Kate Challis who commissioned me to install Le Vol 1 and Le Vol 2 in her home.
March 2019 Melbourne Design Week Event - Blurring the line between art and design
Marion Wine Bar Fitzroy, followed by visit to view the commissioned works by Valerie and Christopher.
Presented by Kate Challis Interiors, a panel discussion with Kate Challis, Valerie Sparks, Christopher Boots (Designer) and Emma Crimmings (Assistant Director Art Bank). Exploring the importance of creative collaboration, the art commissioning process, and the benefits to an experimental approach to design.
March 2019 Burnie Print Prize
I am honoured that my work 'Crossing' has been selected as a finalist for the Burnie Print Prize.
October 2018 Article in Vogue Living November / December Issue
Grand Illusion: Article on the Fitzroy residence of interior designer Kate Challis who commissioned me to install Le Vol 1 and Le Vol 2 in her home.
October 2018 Allusion and Illusion: the fantastical world of Valerie Sparks, Monash Gallery of Art
"This exhibition is the first in a series presented by MGA that profiles and explores the work of William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize alumni. Valerie Sparks won the Bowness Photography Prize in 2016 for her work ‘Prospero's Island – North East’ from the series Prospero's Island (2016). parks creates magnificently beautiful large-scale works that entice the viewer with perfectly impossible landscapes. Each scene is meticulously constructed using her photographs of different landscapes, flora, fauna and taxidermied animals from museum collections. These composite images, which could never exist in nature, draw attention to concerns over the destruction of landscape, post-colonialism and globalisation. This exhibition draws together key works, charting Sparks's significant practice and hinting at the exciting, immersive and innovative installations that will come next."
Anouska Phizacklea - Curator
March 2018 Adjunct Senior Research Fellow - Monash University
Throughout 2018 Valerie will be an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Monash Immersive Visualisation Platform at the New Horizons Research Centre. Here she will have access to their 3D CAVE facility, as well as work with engineers and scientists working in a variety of fields. Valerie will be building on the work started at her residency with the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory in Pisa 2017.
September 2017 Fremantle Print Award
Valerie has come 2nd in the Fremantle Print Award for the work Prospero's Island South West. The FPA is supported by Little Creatures Brewing.
“The juxtaposition and play between areas of light and dark are both frightening and alluring,” said the judges. “In reference to the capture of historical narratives in painting is the dark acknowledgement of the ongoing trauma of the Aboriginal peoples and natural systems impacted upon following the arrival of the white man.”
Judges' comments
September 2017 Australia Council Career Development Grant
Valerie is pleased to announce that she has received a Career Development grant from the Australia Council for her 3D scanning project; 'Point Clouds and Projections'. Valerie will be the first artist in residence at Brisbane based software company Euclideon. She will also continue a dialogue with the Architecture and Design Department, and HITLab 3D research facility of the University of Tasmania. This will be with the view to working together on future arts projects.
August 2017 Gallery Representation
Valerie is no longer represented by this is no fantasy + Dinane Tanzer Gallery. Valerie would like to thank the gallery for their support and wishes them all the best for the future.
Valerie has signed with Bett Gallery in Hobart.
July 2017 Tempest Exhibition Awarded Prize
The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) has received several awards, including the top national prize, at the 2017 Museum and Galleries National Awards for the exhibition 'Tempest'. According the Judges:
"It was an ambitious project, and beautifully realised. One of the judges summed it up as “Taking a single idea and leaning in to it, creating a kaleidoscope effect of diversity of perspectives. The project was fraught with risk but delivered without holding back.” Another judge said “New partnerships with high profile contemporary art organisations and cross-artform programming maximised connections and effectively built audiences”.
"It exemplifies many of the themes and approaches evident in most of this year’s winners: combining arts and sciences; commissioned new artworks alongside and helping the reinterpretation of historic objects; multi-factored partnerships; developing strong relationships with other organisations, and emotional linkages with local communities, as well as developing new audiences; multiple ways to access experiences and learning; and dramatic multi-sensory exhibition design. It was also successful in increasing the relevance and perception of the organisation within government and the tourism industry."
Museums Galleries Australia