Judges 2025

Erica Green, renowned art director, curator, and leader, established Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum, Adelaide, 2007.

Erica Green she is the founding director of the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, established in 2007 at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. In a career of over thirty years in the professional visual arts, she has achieved national renown for her enterprise and leadership as an art museum director, curator and arts administrator, curating or managing over 100 original exhibitions. As director of the Samstag Museum of Art she is responsible for commissioning and developing the Museum’s exhibitions and public programs. She additionally manages the University Art Collection; the prestigious Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships program; and the University of South Australia’s many cultural partnerships.

As the Visual Arts Executive Officer for the 2004 Adelaide Festival led by Artistic Director Stephen Page, she curated the Artists’ Week program featuring American writer and cultural critic Dave Hickey. Erica Green’s expertise in contemporary Australian art was recognised by her 2011 appointment to the federal government’s Cultural Gifts Program committee: she was also a founding member, in 2007, of the influential University Art Museums Australia group (UAMA).

In 2016 Erica Green was appointed Curator of the 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Divided Worlds exhibition. Extending across Adelaide’s cultural precinct, North Terrace, the 2018 Adelaide Biennial was presented at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art at the University of South Australia, JamFactory and Adelaide Botanic Garden including the Santos Museum of Economic Botany. The exhibition titled Divided Worlds, recognises that we live in troubled times. However, rather than foretelling conflict, the exhibition celebrates the enduring role of art and culture. Divided Worlds offers an opportunity to experience an alternative dimension – one where “difference” is the natural order of things, and a strength to be celebrated.

Doreen Mellor is a Ngadjan woman, with cultural heritage links to the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. After two decades as an art educator, Doreen worked with First Nations creatives as a curator, writer, arts administrator and Executive Manager in cultural organisations at state and national levels.

Appointed Visual Arts Manager and Curator at Tandanya from 1992 and inaugural Director of Flinders University Museum of Art from 1996, Doreen curated major exhibitions of First Nations art, including international exchange exhibitions such as Isintu at the South African National Gallery in a curatorial collaboration with Robben Island Museum, and Four Circles Soaring Visions with First Nations Australian and Canadian artists, touring both countries.

A member of numerous art and academic assessment panels for various organisations, universities, the SA state government and the Australia Council for the Arts, Doreen has co-judged the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) with Professor Howard Morphy, and has been a panel judge for the Human Rights and Opportunity Commission (HREOC) Literary Award.

Her extensive work in arts and cultural governance includes chairing and serving on boards of organisations such as Contemporary Art Centre of SA, Art Gallery of SA, Queensland Museum and NAVA the National Association for the Visual Arts. Commissioned by NAVA, and after wide consultation, Doreen wrote Valuing Art, Respecting Culture: Protocols for the Indigenous Visual Arts Sector, with a legal section by Terri Janke. She managed the Bringing Them Home Oral History Project at the National Library of Australia (NLA), producing 340 interviews with the Stolen Generations and others involved in that history. She edited and wrote, with Anna Haebich et al, Many Voices, reflections on experiences of Indigenous child separation. Doreen then established the Philanthropy and Sponsorship program as Director of Development at the NLA. She continues to work independently with art, writing, culture and creative projects.

Andrew Purvis has a Bachelor of Arts (Art, Honours) (2010) and a Masters of Arts (Art) (2012) from Curtin University, Perth and is an artist, educator, and arts writer.

He has previously worked as the Project Officer for Visual Arts, Craft and Writing at the Department of Culture and the Arts in Western Australia.

An accomplished curator and artist, Purvis has curated a series of ambitious exhibitions in Western Australia, most notably at the Fremantle Arts Centre and the Lawrence Wilson Gallery. He has also assisted with the execution of a number of large-scale commissions.

Purvis is interested in bringing his Western Australian networks into conversation with South Australian arts practices having previously worked with Perth-based artists including Rebecca Baumann and Abdul-Rahman Abdullah. He has a particular interest in exhibition design and generating subtle interactions and conversations between art works.

Andrew Purvis is the current Curator at Adelaide Central Gallery, attached to Adelaide Central School of Arts.