Art2Words Writing Prize 2025
Posted on August 7, 2025
The Art2Words writing prize is an annual Friends’ School writing competition, based upon the Ancient Greek practice of ekphrasis: responding to an art work in words.
Art2Words involves students writing either a short story or poem in response to student art work. The art work which is the inspiration for the creative writing is that of the winner of The Visual Arts Prize of the previous year.
The Friends’ Visual Arts Prize is an annual award, granted to a senior Art student for their consistently exceptional approach to their practice, rigour of their research, complexity and sophistication of the ideas and issues they explore, and the professional quality of their exhibited works.
The Winner of the 2024 Visual Arts Prize was Severine Cherry for her work ‘Echoes of Identity’. Severine’s work explores the way in which people attach meaning and memory to objects, transforming them into reflections of identity. Her exhibition was inspired by a maximalist display of objects that captured what her family valued, and reimagined to her own experiences, inviting views to engage with each of the 38 objects and be drawn into a narrative of contemplative significance. Severine’s medium was cardboard; materially symbolic of transience, the commercial exchange of goods and themes of materialism – yet their meaning gives their true value. She invited views to reflect on how their own identities may be expressed through objects and memories in their lives.
Art2Words is open to students in Years 7-12, and has two sections: Secondary (Years 7-9) and Senior Secondary (Years 10-12) with poetry and short story categories in each section. Entries are judged by a member of the editorial team of Tasmania’s Forty South magazine, which focuses on Tasmania, its people, places, artists, photographers and writers. The work of all short-listed entrants, including prize winners, will be published in the ‘Young Tasmania’ section of Forty South’s online magazine, allowing them to gain local, national and international exposure. Prize winners’ work is also published on our School website and additionally, they receive a generous gift voucher from The Hobart Bookshop.
In 2025, writers were invited to respond to the entire body of work or to one of the art works in Severine Cherry’s exhibition as the stimulus for their short story or poem. Writers could choose to be inspired by any combination of the chosen artist’s art works (images or objects), titles and artist’s statements.
Chris Champion, Editor of Forty South, judged the Art2Word entries, and arrived at the following winners for this year:
Absent: Ari Cater and Aquaria Nicholas
Secondary poetry
‘Silly Little Things’ by Aquaria Nicholas (Year 9)
Secondary short story
‘Untitled’ by Remy Rawlings-Way (Year 9)
Senior Secondary poetry
‘Perigee and Apogee’ by Evelyn Barta (Year 11)
Senior Secondary short story
‘All the Small Things’ by Ari Cater (Year 10)
