The Judging Panel
I / IVHistorian. Veteran. Storyteller.
Dr Spurling is notoriously well known for her books and documentaries exploring Australian military history and military cover-ups, bringing a meticulous eye for detail, research and storytelling to everything she creates.
I believe we should defend those unable to defend themselves and publicly question those who abuse power and privilege.Dr Kathryn Spurling
The record
Kathryn has spent her working life recovering the people behind Australia's military history — particularly those whose stories were ignored, dismissed or deliberately buried.
Kathryn served in a navy where women were not permitted to deploy to sea, and where the service of the WRANS was treated as the lesser contribution. Harassment was common and rarely answered for. She has written since that she was one of those cases.
At the Australian Defence Force Academy she found a culture carried across largely intact from the all-male Royal Military College, Duntroon. No woman had graduated with a PhD in History there. She completed hers while tutoring, guest lecturing, founding the ADFA track and field team and coaching its women's basketball side to a grade win in the ACT competition.
Word got around that she was approachable, at a time when military staff and civilian psychologists were considered compromised. Her office door opened to a great many young women with accounts that were difficult to hear.
Her writing on military culture took her to the lectern overseas more often than at home. In 2000 she became the first Australian invited to speak at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on women in the military, and the first Australian Summer Military History Fellow at the United States Military Academy, West Point.
In 1999, over objections from within the ADFA hierarchy, she convened Women in Uniform: Perceptions and Pathways — the first Australian conference to address the service and conditions of women in the military, police and fire brigade.
From her first book in 2008 she set out to tell the human side of war — not the people who commanded, but the ones at the pointy end, commonly teenagers facing what nobody should. Fire at Sea examined the graft, corruption and poor management behind the deaths of four sailors aboard HMAS Westralia in 1998.
Her work has also gone well outside the services: a Queensland farmer defrauded by his bank, and a four-year project on six Australian women who changed their fields, which she published herself in 2013 after too many publishers passed.
Having partnered in an art gallery and being an art collector, Dr Spurling also brings valuable experience in evaluating artistic merit, originality and craftsmanship — which is precisely why she is on this panel and not simply on the letterhead.
What she'll be scoring
Judges score independently against the published criteria before conferring. One hundred points are on the table, and this is how they're divided.
Has anyone seen this before? The idea has to be yours.
How well it's actually made — the joins, the finish, the hours that show.
Goggles alone won't do it. We're looking for a real connection to the theme.
What the work does to a room, and how well you've shown it to us.
Stories of courage, injustice and the people history tried to forget.