Celebrating the 2025 Nevetts Lawyers Open Program

This year’s Open Program, presented by Nevetts Lawyers, was our largest to date — an incredible showcase of creativity and community spirit, with 92 exhibitions across 102 locations featuring the work of 217 artists from Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland.

The 2025 jury brought deep expertise and passion to their selections: Dr Anindita Banerjee, interdisciplinary artist, curator and Public Art Officer for the City of Ballarat, and Garrie Maguire, Melbourne-based photographer, curator, collector and founder of XYZ Photo Gallery.

Announced on 30 August, the winner of the 2025 Open Program Award is Elli Bardas for the exhibition Wild Things (image above).

Presented in memory of Dr Stephen Hennessy — an award-winning artist and designer from Naarm (Melbourne) and the 2023 Open Program Award winner — this prize celebrates creativity and innovation in photographic practice.

Wild Things was a striking outdoor installation displayed on the exterior of the Ballarat Mining Exchange at the Federation University Campus, visible from Lydiard Street North. The judging panel noted, “Wild Things is a vibrant celebration of untamed nature and human imagination. The photographs are whimsical, surreal, and richly textured, blurring boundaries between reality and fantasy. This exhibition invites viewers to embrace curiosity and chaos, revealing the wildness within and around us with playful, provocative flair.”

As the recipient of this year’s award, Bardas received a $2,000 prize, presented by Dr Hennessy’s wife, Teresa Tjia.

Additional honours in the Open Program include the Ballarat Arts Alive – Ballarat Artist Award ($500) and the Hygge Property Award ($500).

This year’s Hygge Property Award is presented to Setareh Hosseini, who received a high commendation overall for her outstanding contribution to the program, Emigrabilia, presented at Roy Hammond. The panel of judges praised the exhibition, “The artist weaves fragments of migration, longing, and cultural inheritance into a visual tapestry. It’s an evocative meditation on displacement and belonging, where everyday objects become vessels of emotion, history, and the quiet resilience of lived experience. The installation sits in a busy dimly lit bar yet makes an impression on the onlooker, gently nudging them to drift off and contemplate.”

Ian Kemp is the winner of the Ballarat Arts Alive Award for the exhibition 1 in 4, presented at Mr Jones Dining. The judges commented, “It’s a courageous and necessary work that destigmatises vulnerability and amplifies voices often left unheard. The photographs are sublime and almost abstract alluding to the complex and multilayered narrative of domestic violence.”

An Honourable Mention was awarded to Brian Hodges for his exhibition From Scraps to Goals: Uganda’s Handmade Soccer Balls presented at Beechworth Bakery Ballarat. The judges said, “The dichotomy of recuperated materials and poverty on one hand and absolute pride joy, of realities of what feels like another world – Uganda, narrated through a modern, polished commercial photographic style and shown in an old fashioned bakery cafe in a regional town in Victoria in itself is testament to the power of photographic storytelling. This project demands an honourable mention for the subject and storytelling, the presentation of the works and the scale and curation in its current setting.”

Finally, coinciding with the conclusion of the 11th Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Dee Kelly’s exhibition Luminaria, presented at Grainery Lane, received the highest number of votes and is the winner of the People’s Choice Award.

Congratulations to the hundreds of artists who participated in the 2025 Open Program — your creativity and dedication continue to make the Ballarat International Foto Biennale a vibrant platform for photographic expression.