Tina FiveAsh PhD is a multi-award-winning Australian photo-artist and academic whose practice spans over 30 years. Working across still and moving-image photography, including anaglyphic (3D) and lenticular forms, her work has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally in galleries, festivals, and public spaces—in addition to appearing on billboards, illuminated displays, book and magazine covers, and in film and television.
Holding three photography-focused academic degrees, FiveAsh has received numerous accolades, including recognition from the Blake Art Prize (Finalist 2022, 2016), Olive Cotton Award (Highly Commended 2017, People’s Choice 2013), National Photographic Portrait Prize (Finalist 2016), and the Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award (Finalist 2016, Highly Commended 2007).
Her international exhibition history includes the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art in Greece (in collaboration with artist Deborah Kelly), the 13th Pingyao International Photography Festival in China (2013), Terra Nullius: Contemporary Art from Australia and Die Ideale Ausstellung at Kunstfest Weimar in Germany (2009).
Emerging in the early 1990s, FiveAsh’s early photographic work provocatively explored cultural taboos around lesbian identity in the 1950s, using wit and irony to subvert traditional narratives. Over the past decade, her practice has shifted toward metaphysical and philosophical inquiries, engaging with themes of consciousness, memory, mortality, and the afterlife. Her recent imagery often features text-based compositions—neon signs and weathered messages set against twilight skies—invoking liminal spaces between the material and spiritual realms.
FiveAsh’s work is known for its emotive visual storytelling, which invites audiences into deeper reflection on grief, loss, and life’s impermanence. As an artist working at the intersection of social justice, spirituality, and end-of-life contemplation, her practice is both visually striking and socially transformative. She is also the creator of The Death Letter Project, an online socially-engaged research photography project, exploring contemporary perspectives of death and the afterlife in Australia.
FiveAsh’s work is held in the Australian Artbank Collection, The Art Gallery of Ballarat, Whitford Fine Art Gallery (London) and several private collections around the world.