Regional Spotlight Artist Profile | Jacob Bunt

The Regional Spotlight initiative is an opportunity for Wide-Bay Burnett artists at any stage in their career, working in any visual art medium, to receive mentorship and share their work at the gallery. Developed from an expressions of interest process, the 2025 exhibition brings a multifaceted survey of local artists sharing their personal connection to space, landscape, environment, home and time through mediums of painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and mixed media work. Jacob Bunt explores working with miniature sculptural scratch-building and lives in Hervey Bay.

Through the medium of miniature sculptural scratch-building. Jacob Bunt re-creates buildings that have succumbed to demolition and decay 

How long have you been making artwork?

My earliest memorable moments of my artistic journey began similarly to many others I imagine, with crayons, a seemingly endless roll of butcher's paper, and a livingroom floor space to proudly claim as my studio! My current practice and exploration of place and individual experience however emerged around 2018.

What are your favourite mediums to work with and why?

I predominantly work across two mediums, watercolour and ink, and miniature sculptural scratch-building. I am fascinated and enthused by the intricacy and finer detail of both mediums, especially the boundless opportunity for innovative material repurposing involved in scratch-building. 

Who/what inspires or influences you?

The individuality of our human experience constantly inspires me, and how we intrinsically associate place and location to those unique memories. Buildings and structures become vessels that will forever hold core memories, unconsciously associating these moments with specific places and forming an intimate and purely individual connection to something totally inanimate.

Has your practice and subject matter changed over time? If so, how?

My practice has undergone a shift primarily from the appreciation of unconventional beauty in urban spaces and locations, to further examining the reasons behind the emotional connections we establish with a place, and the Portuguese concept of ‘Saudade’. The term denotes the melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for something beloved yet absent, and I explore this in dialogue with the fleeting nature of memories and the impermanence of the moments that implicate these places.

What do you like most about living in the region?

Throughout my upbringing, I have rarely lived away from the coastline, naturally developing an emotional connection to the diversity and enchanting ecosystems of our coastal environment. The closeness I share with family and their presence in the region also furthers my connection.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Never let perfectionism and an arbitrary sense of ‘finish’ inhibit your ability to always be creating.

What is the most interesting feedback you have had about your work?

Sometimes in reflecting on the impermanence of moments and experiences, my work can evoke rather melancholic and sombre emotions, while the miniature nature of the medium offers a visual resemblance to toy-like modelling, childhood and doll-house aesthetics. I’ve often received this feedback, the audience intrigued by the competing emotions of grief and joy, and their similarity to the confusing emotional state of loss or the celebration of life.

Photo: Lumi Creative