Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize

Sanné Mestrom’s playable sculptures explore ideas of female representation in Western art, particularly modernism, through the personal lens of motherhood. Her work responds to the physical transformation of the maternal body, reimagining it as a site of shared utility, discovery and beauty. Through abstracted bodily forms, Mestrom advocates for sculpture that invites intergenerational, open-ended play—encouraging curiosity, imagination and resilience, particularly in children.

Born in the Netherlands in 1979, Mestrom moved to New Zealand in 1983 and to Australia in 1998. She holds a PhD and a Masters in Public Art from RMIT University and currently lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Her work has featured in major exhibitions including The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Her Parts (National Gallery of Australia, 2025), Solar Cry (Sullivan + Strumpf, 2024), and From Will to Form (TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2018). Her sculptures are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, the National Gallery of Australia and the MCA.

Mestrom won the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2017) and the John Fries Memorial Prize (2011). She has undertaken residencies in Seoul and Mexico City and regularly contributes to the arts through talks, panels and public commissions.

"Thrilled to be invited to judge the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize alongside an incredible panel - I won this prize in 2017 on the eve of my son's birth, and the prize enabled the entire next chapter of my life, so it's such an honour to now help champion other sculptors - forging their way through art and life - and contribute to this important platform for contemporary sculpture."

Megan Monte is the inaugural Director of Ngununggula, Southern Highlands Regional Gallery, which launched in 2021. Before this, she was the inaugural Co-Director at Cement Fondu, a contemporary not-for-profit art space in Paddington, and the Curator of Contemporary Art at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Megan holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney), a Diploma in Secondary Education, Visual Arts (New England University), and a Masters in Arts Administration (UNSW Art & Design). Recent curatorial projects include; in a part of your mind, I am you a major solo exhibition with Tom Polo (2025), The Art World Came to Us: Macquarie Galleries 1938 - 1964 (2024), New Dog Old Tricks (2023) and Land Abounds: Abdul Abdullah, Abdul Rahman Abdullah & Tracey Moffatt (2022).

"I'm thrilled to be on the judging panel for this year's Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize! This prestigious prize celebrates the wondrous world of sculpture and its scalable possibilities. It also highlights artists' creative pursuits, echoing their ideas and conceptual inquiries. It's an absolute honour to be involved this year!"

Justin Paton is an acclaimed writer on art and head curator of international art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. His projects for the Art Gallery have included Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? (2023), Dreamhome: Stories of Art & Shelter, Francis Upritchard's Here Comes Everybody, and the inaugural Nelson Packer Tank commission by Adrián Villar Rojas. Paton's books include How to Look at a Painting (Awa Press, 2005), McCahon Country (Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamāki and Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2019) and the book of the Dreamhome exhibition (2023). Paton is currently working on Mike Hewson's sculptural project, The Key's Under the Mat, opening in the Nelson Packer Tank in October.

"Small can be beautiful — and also potent, alluring, dense, profound, magnetic, strange, wondrous, delightful, prickly, pithy. I'm looking forward to encountering small sculptures of all these kinds in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize 2025."