Alexander Forrest, Wirlarra-Karla (ART & CONCEPTUAL 2025)

Pilbara earth inspires this piece – a region of Australia’s outback defined by its ancient geology, vast plains, and painterly iron-red landscape. Veiled in crushed blacks, maroon, and golden tones drawn from the iconic glossy black cockatoo feathers (Pirtirra) and the rare lunar eclipse, each element echoes the burnt landscape and the Australian Aboriginal Flag. The Pilbara-based Jiwarli title is pronounced wheh-lehr-lrah gahr-lah and translates to “Fire Moon.” The hundreds of Indigenous Australian languages like Jiwarli are now rare spoken, risking Australia the loss of extensive cultural knowledge embedded within them – knowledge accumulated over perhaps more than 15,000 fire moons.

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