It’s been a family tradition since Stirling McNeill was a preschooler to make the pilgrimage to Bathurst’s Mount Panorama track. So when it came to painting a subject close to his heart for his HSC studies, McNeill paid homage to the hilltop racetrack.
“I’ve always loved motor racing, but especially motor racing at Bathurst,” says the former Randwick High student, whose father, Greg, is an internationally renowned Australian automotive artist known for creating detailed paintings of Bathurst 1000 racing and Formula 1.
“It’s probably, in my opinion, the greatest racetrack in the world,” says Stirling. “The racing is always exciting, the passion of fans is incredible, so it’s not hard to be captivated by the spectacle it is.”
McNeill is among 51 HSC graduates whose major work will feature in the 43rd edition of ArtExpress, opening at the Art Gallery of NSW on Thursday.
Since 1989, the gallery has displayed works from HSC entrants, with many former exhibitors going on to distinguished careers. Archibald Prize 2025 winner Julie Fragar featured in ArtExpress 1995 and credits the honour with cementing her desire to become a full-time artist.
“It told me I might have something to offer as an artist and started my thinking about how I might make that happen,” she says.
Notably, only one of four student artists the Herald interviewed has chosen to study visual arts.
Program curator Louise Halpin hand-picked the student artists from a Department of Education honorarium of 500 students who completed the HSC Visual Arts subject in 2025.
Talent was only one part of Halpin’s selection criteria. She also aimed to “capture the story” of the 2025 student experience. Memory, heritage, and home are major preoccupations of a cohort entering the workforce amid the disruptions of artificial intelligence.
“There’s quite a few grandmothers, actually,” says Halpin. “Regional students are doing some really interesting things from within their own land, their family properties, or landscapes, exploring their family connection to country.”
McNeill took iconic works by Tom Roberts, Jeffrey Smart, and Sidney Nolan, and gave them a motor racing touch-up. Roberts’ masterpiece, Shearing the Rams, features a pitstop crew changing tyres. There is also a little of Jasper Knight, Shaun Gladwell and Sidney Nolan in the black silhouetted GP moto rider wearing a helmet not unlike Nolan’s Ned Kelly.
Robert Edwards
McNeill plans to study history and politics at the University of Sydney: “Maybe I’ll continue art in a creative way but not as a full-time career. I think if you do it as a job, you don’t like it so much, right? I wouldn’t say it would kill the joy, but I wouldn’t want to spend 20 or 30 years doing it; I think it would be quite hard.”
Among other featured student artists is Scarlett Fotheringham, formerly of Killara High, who challenged the idolisation of flawless youth in a series of portraits celebrating sassy women of an older vintage.
For her HSC major work, More is More and Less is a Bore, Fotheringham channelled artists Maggi Hambling, Vincent van Gogh, and Isabella Cotier. “Ageing well isn’t about who looks the youngest,” she says. “I think it is who accepts who they are and embraces it.”
Fotheringham is enrolled in architecture and hopes “that will be a good creative outlet, but I think I’ll keep painting”.
“It will be art for my own enjoyment.”
Maddison Beanland painted three pillars to represent herself, her artist mother Anne Beanland, and her father. Completed during her mother’s illness and after her death in February 2025, each pillar represents their different gazes. Beanland’s perspective is represented by a barren tree in a lush green landscape; her mother bare hills; and her father gushing water.
“I’m so very honoured to be on the walls,” she says. “With my mum, I’ve been coming to this place, ArtExpress, since I was four. It’s been a major source of inspiration.”
Her plan is to become a pilot, preferably with the Flying Doctor Service.
Only Riana Shimamune, of Dulwich High School of Visual Arts and Design, is aiming to become a full-time visual artist, having been accepted into Fine Arts at the University of Sydney. She airbrushed gentle scenes from Japan and Hyde Park to speak of her split heritage.
Halpin is hopeful the recognition the exhibition brings might give the young artists greater confidence to think big. “Out of the 51, I’m confident there will be some that continue. There’s always going to be some major artist that will emerge.”
If a student is weighing that question to decide whether to follow the art path, Fragar’s advice is to would get on with it. “If you love art, and you are a hard worker, you’ll find a way to make it work, even if you sometimes have other jobs along the way.”
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