Petra Matthews, Shipwreck Coast - The Loch Ard (ART & CONCEPTUAL 2025)

I grew up near Victoria’s wild and storied Shipwreck Coast, where the sea holds the memory of countless lost vessels. The tales of these shipwrecks stirred my imagination, echoing the journey of my own parents, who migrated from Europe by boat in the 1950s. Among the most haunting of these stories is that of the Loch Ard, wrecked near Port Campbell in 1878—a tragedy etched into the cliffs and waves of the coastline. On many windswept, stormy days, I returned to these shores, drawn to the places where these vessels met their fate. Through the use of Intentional Camera Movement, I sought to capture not just the landscape, but a sense of what the passengers and sailors might have glimpsed in their final moments—blurred, fleeting, and filled with the motion of the sea.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.