Bette Mifsud is currently a full-time Australian Post Graduate Award scholar in Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Cultural Research. She graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 1985 with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, and in 1996 from the University of NSW College of Fine Art with a Master of Fine Arts (First Class Honours).

Bette has worked in various arts organizations including The Australian Centre for Photography, Artspace, the Art Workers Union, the Arts Law Centre of Australia and the City of Sydney Sculpture Walk. She has also taught art and photography at the universities of Sydney and Western Sydney and the Western Sydney Institute Nepean since 1990.

Bette has been exhibiting large-scale photo-media works, installations and portraiture in Australia and overseas since 1985. She has had 17 solo exhibitions to date including Mute at the Art Gallery of NSW, and Landmarks Watermarks II at The National Museum of Fine Art in Malta in 1995. In 1991 her installation, Vault Suite, was exhibited in Australian Perspecta exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Bette's portraits have been selected for major national portrait awards including the Australian Photographic Portrait Award in 2003 and 2006 at the Art Gallery of NSW, the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture in 2005 and 2006.

As well as other awards Bette Mifsud received a Tokyo studio residency (1990) and grants from the Australia Council for the Arts; a grant from the Australian Network for Art and Technology, an inaugural Western Sydney Artist Fellowship from the NSW Ministry for the Arts. In 2003, Roger Butler, Senior Curator from the National Gallery of Australia awarded Bette the Major Prize for her work Fugitive Ground in the Hazelhurst Award for Art on Paper.

Her work is represented in a number of National, State, corporate and private collections. Bette Mifsud has a home studio in Katoomba, where she lives with her husband and son.

On turning 55 and being given a grumpy old mans book by Senior Management it was a bit of a wake-up shock. The pages about seeking a younger “sole mate” had been torn out and points about taking up a hobby or art had been highlighted, whilst pages on cleaning up your property had been tagged and marked “take note”.

At the same time pieces from the agricultural machinery and industrial waste collection of 30 years started to creep onto walkways.

One day the subliminal messages from Senior Management and the bruised toes clicked – trip art was invented. I found later that fiendish wives throughout the world had done similar things and that this form of old man therapy was known as; found art or junk art and for those too lazy to weld- assembled art.

The welder started attacking the metal stack and mufflers soon became penguins, truck springs changed to panthers. There was no stopping.

After filling the garden with sculptures, friends sternly started saying “no more”; it was time to trot around the Blue Mountain galleries.

Three years later and still no noticeable reduction in the size of the scrap heap or amount of clutter, the creative challenge continues. No animal, person or belief could be considered sacred or beyond the scope of an aging welder gone feral.

The right brain challenge requires the writing of descriptive tags unique to each work, pushing social comment, occasional dry humour and a dash of cynicism all in the cause that art should be fun.

Works are now found throughout Australia and overseas, with strong interest in America, Canada and France.

Shoey’s combination of surrealism, animation and character influences provide a self assured approach to the discipline of sculpture, resulting in a unique range of works.