‘Everything is going to shit’: Meme-inspired knitted work judged crowd favourite at Ramsay Art Prize
A two-part textile work that weaves classical imagery with 21st century anxieties – and Barnaby Joyce – has won the popular vote at the biennial Ramsay Art Prize.
‘Everything is going to shit’, declares Emma Buswell’s textile artwork The Pool – and it seems the people agree.
The Fremantle artist has been named People’s Choice winner of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s 2025 Ramsay Art Prize, taking home $15,000 for the vividly satirical knitted work.
Comprising two large-scale textile works created on hand-operated knitting machine from the 1960s, The Pool draws influence from online meme culture as Buswell uses classically-inspired scenes by Pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse to reflect on climate change, Australian politics, and the nature of art-making in the 21st century.
In one piece, Waterhouse’s 1903 oil painting Echo and Narcissus is given a red-hot edge – complete with Black Summer-inspired flames, a cameo from former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce captured in his famous sidewalk repose, and the zeitgeist-touching words, ‘everything is going to shit’.
“The work is looking at the mythology of Echo and Narcissus as an analogy for echo chambers, and the relationship between the media and people in power,” Buswell told InReview.
The second evokes Waterhouse’s 1915 work I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott, repositioning the titular character – an Arthurian figure pictured weaving a tapestry while confined to a tower – as a metaphor for the conflict artists face today as bystanders and commentators in a time of ‘general havoc and turmoil’.
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“They’re kind of a collage of different things; of classical art history references, but also contemporary concerns. The fire is an allusion to climate change, and the restraint the government’s been having on curtailing the fossil fuel industry. It’s thinking about all the stuff that’s inside my head – my paranoia, my anxieties about the future – and trying to produce an image that hopefully everyone can read and understand, and maybe find some solidarity with.”
Buswell told InReview it was a “relief” to learn that audiences had responded so strongly to her work and the conversations it broaches.
“It’s been really rewarding, and also to know that people are feeling the same kind of frustrations that I feel when I’m making that work.”
"It’s thinking about all the stuff that’s inside my head – my paranoia, my anxieties about the future – and trying to produce an image that hopefully everyone can read and understand, and maybe find some solidarity with."
Art Gallery of South Australia director Jason Smith said the People’s Choice prize celebrated the “powerful connection between an artist and the audience.
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“Emma Buswell’s work cleverly intertwines art history and mythology with contemporary issues through the medium of textile, creating an immersive field of pattern and texture for the viewer,” Smith said.
Adelaide. Photo: Saul Steed / Supplied
The Pool marks Buswell’s second time as a Ramsay Art Prize finalist – the giant jumpers of her earlier work Suburban Turrets were shortlisted in 2023. She is also the second West Australian artist to win big at this year’s Ramsay Art Prize, with the Perth-born, Sydney-based artist Jack Ball taking out the $100,000 overall prize in May for his large-scale installation Heavy Grit.
Of the challenges of making work in the West, removed from Australia’s East Coast-centric art establishment, Buswell cited some advice given by Lisa Slade, the Art Gallery of South Australia’s former director of artistic programs, during a challenging moment for the West Australian arts community.
“She had this amazing line that’s kind of just resonated and stayed in folklore here, almost, where she said, ‘Nobody’s coming to save you, the cavalry has not been called,’” Buswell recalls.
“And for me, WA is a really incredible place to take risks and to try big things. And we have such a rich culture of place-based making here, where people really are interested in mythologies and local lore, and how you can propagate that in an artistic way.
“So for me it’s been a really magical place to grow up and make work, and it’s exciting now to see how I can take that on the national stage.”
The Ramsay Art Prize 2025 exhibition continues at the Art Gallery of South Australia until August 31 2025