L-R, Artist Valerie Callister, SAM Curator – Community Caroline Esbenshade, artist Lehansa Samaranayake. Photo: Shepparton Art Museum

Shepparton Art Museum competition prize SAM Open 2025 in final days

Get a glimpse of the awarded works from local art-makers.

Shepparton Art Museum’s annual open-call group exhibition for local creatives, SAM Open 2025 exhibition closes this weekend. The competition-based show has been on display in the SAM Community Gallery with the People’s Choice awards revealed at their official exhibition celebration on Friday 31 October.

Open to local creatives aged 16 and over, living, working, or studying in the Goulburn Valley and Hume regions, the voting was open to the public throughout the duration of the exhibition. Out of the 66 displayed works, artist Valerie Callister was awarded the adult winner whilst Lehansa Samranayake took out the youth category in the renowned competition prize.

Shepparton Art Museum

Where: 530 Wyndham Street, Yorta Yorta Country, Shepparton VIC 3632

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An intricate textile work, Valerie Callister’s winning entry Mycelial Threads draws inspiration from photographs captured during the artist’s travels to celebrate the many forms of fungi in our landscape. Through her detailed embroidery, Callister mirrors the complexity of fungal structures and their connectedness with their surrounds.

Artist Lehansa Samaranayake’s touching self-portrait Bear Hugs From A Distance earned her the People’s Choice Award in the under-25’s category. Emerging as a promising young creative talent, Samaranayake’s deftly executed painting captures her yearning to embrace a long-distance friend, with a teddy bear standing in her place until their next meeting.

This years competition was high, with SAM Curator – Community, Caroline Esbenshade commenting, “We had some great feedback comments in this year’s votes for People’s Choice, mainly wishing they could vote for more than one work! Both works were praised for their technical skill, uniqueness, and tactile quality.”

“Samaranayake’s skill in rendering the teddy bear in oil paint creates a masterful illusion where, if only we could touch, it our hands would be met with the soft nap and hard resin of the plush toy. It also inspires just a twinge of tightening in the chest for loved ones we wish we could hold.”

She continues, “Similarly, through different textile fibres Callister creates that unique texture only mushrooms seem to have for several different fungi, and through their presentation we are transported to the forest floor through each vignette. You can almost smell wet leaves and moss.”

SAM Open 2025 is in its final days on display at SAM. You can visit the award-winning works and all other entries until Sunday 9 November.

Find out more about Shepparton Art Museum and all of their current and upcoming exhibitions and public programs here.