Minister for the Arts Don Harwin recently announced Wingello artist Rowan Conroy would receive one of three $50,000 Create NSW (Priority) Regional Arts Fellowships.

Mr Conroy is a visual artist and lecturer in Photography at the Australian National University.

In 2012, he was awarded a PhD from the University of Sydney for his thesis, Archaeologies of the Present: Rephotographing the William John Woodhouse Photographic Archive, a rephotography project undertaken in Greece revisiting well-known and obscure archaeological sites and urban environments.

In 2013, the Australian Centre for Photography exhibited a major retrospective of Mr Conroy's PhD research, The Woodhouse Rephotography Project.

He has been the recipient of numerous competitive grants and his artworks are regularly shortlisted for nationally significant art prizes.

He has exhibited extensively and his works are held in public and private collections in Australia and internationally.

Mr Conroy described the grants as “life-changing.”

“Its amazing and it will allow me to travel and enjoy new work opportunities,” he said. 

As the fellowship is a program of professional development, Mr Conway will travel to the United States for a few workshop. He has also been offered an exciting opportunity in Cyprus. 

“I have been offered an outstanding opportunity of significance to my practice, an invitation to be the artist in residence at the Paphos Theatre excavations in Cyprus in 2018 and 2019,” Mr Conway said. 

The excavations are centred on the remains of a Hellenistic theatre (300 BCE- 360 CE).

An exhibition Travellers to Cyprus: Artists from Australia for the Paphos 2017 European Capital of Culture (EU funding) exhibits 12 artists who have worked on the theatre site, including his work from 2006 when Mr Conway was an undergraduate working on site as an excavator and draughtsperson.

The excavation is supported by the Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney, and The Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens.

“The role of visual artists on the site gives this scientific excavation an imaginative dimension where potters, photographers, sculptors and weavers demonstrate the lineage of technologies from ancient to contemporary, allowing archaeology to embrace inter-disciplinary practice,” Mr Conway said.

Mr Conway’s Lake George exhibition, titled Weereewe will be on show at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery in 2019.