Now in its sixth year, Qantas’ Spirit of Youth Awards supports emerging talent in Australian fashion, film, music, design, photography, visual communications and visual arts. Besides epic exposure the eventual winners, announced November 11 at Sydney’s MCA, receive $10,000 in flights and cash and a professional mentoring relationship with a leader in their field. It’s unfortunate there’s isn’t a “procrastination” category because I could really use $10,000 and I’ve always wanted to meet Axl Rose.
With the caliber of past winners Young + Restless, Antipodium, Friedrich Gray and My Disco, the SOYA team certainly have a keen eye for skillz and with the announcement of this year’s jaw dropping shortlist they look set to expose (and fund) even better talent this year.
Pedestrian favourites litter the shortlist including: Seekae, Talons, Sherlock’s Daughter, Duke Magazine, Romance Was Born, Limedrop, myPetsQuare, Daniel Boud and Cybele Malinowski. No surprises there. We were surprised however, to learn that Van She drummer Tomek Archer is an industrial and object designer. So there you go, learning something new every day.
The shortlist is as follows:
FASHION
Jade Sarita Arnott for Arnsdorf
Kristy Barber for Kuwaii
Gary Bigeni
Alexi Freeman
Clea Garrick & Nathan Price for Limedrop
Claire Greaves for Maise Label
Shannon Gunn for Tom Gunn
Vicki Lee for myPetsQuare, sQ, mYmYheYheY
Anna Plunkett for Romance Was Born
Ingrid Verner for TV
FILM
Britt Arthur
Genevieve Bailey
Sam Bryant
Kasimir Burgess
Matthew Chuang
Michael Hill
Anna Jeffries
Alyssa McClelland
Gracie Otto
Goran Stolevski
INDUSTRIAL & OBJECT DESIGN
Tomek Archer for Tomahawk Studios
Kristian Aus for Autumn Products
Jenni Baxter
Kirsten Black for Halo Headphones
Emma Elizabeth Coffey for Emma Elizabeth Designs
Amanda Dziedzic
Tom Fereday
Peta Kruger
Milenka Osen and Georgie Swift for TMOD
Brad Stebbing
MUSIC
Art vs Science
Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!
Oh Mercy
Seekae
Sherlock’s Daughter
Songs
Sugar Army
Talons
The Scientists of Modern Music
Tom Ugly
PHOTOGRAPHY
Daniel Boud
Jessie Boylan
Matt Caplin
Megan Cullen
Sean Fennessy
Nirrimi Hakanson
Thom Kerr
Cybele Malinowski
Briony Ridley
George Voulgaropoulos
VISUAL ARTS
Rebecca Baumann
Jacqueline Bradley
Michaela Gleave
Agatha Gothe-Snape
Ash Keating
Eugenia Lim
Kenzee Patterson
Simon Pericich
Ivan Ruhle for Bababa International
Kit Webster
VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS
Andrew Apostola for Portable
Anna Blandford for Able and Game
Daniel Dittmar for Happenstance
Emily Hunt & Raquel Welch for DUKE Magazine
Yiying Lu
Sumita Maharaj
Andrew Moffitt for MOFFITT.MOFFITT.
Tin Nguyen for tin&ed
Mel Stringer
Eveline Tarunadjaja
Image via Boudist (Backstage at Romance Was Born)
