No. 23Finalist · Noosa Art Prize 2026
In plain sight
Phil Hayes
Fitzroy North, VIC
Artist statement
In Plain Sight imagines a version of Australia where the thylacine never disappeared and simply kept living alongside us. I wanted the scene to feel completely normal at first—a young woman, a classic Range Rover, a magpie nearby—then slowly become strange once you notice the thylacine standing there as if it belongs. There’s no big drama or obvious storyline. It’s just a quiet, everyday moment that shouldn’t be possible, but somehow feels believable.
I keep returning to the thylacine because it carries so much history, grief and mystery, but I’m also interested in placing it back into ordinary life. For me, that creates a small shift in reality and asks the viewer to sit with what was lost. It also makes me wonder how differently we might see wildlife, extinction and our own responsibility if the thylacine had never vanished and was still here, in plain sight, among us today.