28/08/2026
2026 Infuse Art Prize Finalists…
Tas Wansbrough & Steph Wallace
Artwork: Disturbed Landscape
Medium: Basalt, Redgum, Leather and Ceramic
Dimensions: 18 cm (W) × 14 cm (D) × 31.5 cm (H)
Price: $4,700
Artist Statement:
This collaborative work emerges from an ongoing dialogue between ceramicist Steph Wallace and sculptor Tas Wansbrough. Living and working within close proximity in Ballarat, both artists maintain studio practices that are largely solitary, rigorous and deeply engaged with material processes. Their friendship is sustained through regular walks together across the surrounding bushland and landscapes.
These walks have become an important extension of their practices, offering space for conversation, observation and reflection. Moving through the region, they encounter a landscape profoundly altered by intensive mining activity. The remnants of extraction remain visible in disturbed earth, altered waterways and fragmented ecologies that continue to bear the marks of rapid transformation.
Wallace’s investigations into wild clay and Wansbrough’s work with stone and timber are united by a shared attentiveness to the materials of place. Both artists are drawn to what the land reveals through its physical substance, its layers, fractures, textures and traces of time.
As a migrant to Australia and a first-generation Australian respectively, Wallace and Wansbrough share a relationship to Ballarat as arrivals. Their understanding of the region has developed gradually through walking, making and paying attention. The history of the place is not something assumed or inherited, but an ongoing revelation encountered through the landscape itself.
This work reflects a shared curiosity about the stories embedded within materials and a sensitivity to the enduring scars, resilience and transformations held within the land.
Infuse ENDS THIS SUNDAY AT 4pm
