Awarded each year to one graduating Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours student from Sydney Collage of the Arts, the recipient of the award is mentored closely by Artereal Gallery for one year and given the opportunity to exhibit with the gallery via an online solo exhibition. The Artereal Gallery Mentorship Award allows the recipient to seek advice and guidance relating to their professional development, including  the development of artistic practice, exhibition opportunities, art prizes, residences and artist profiling opportunities.

Monika Viktoria Diak received the 2020 award for her powerfully haunting body of work titled Spectral Phenomena: Corollary to Anomalous Experience.

“This series of watercolour paintings emerged after a set of sleep paralysis episodes inspired reflections into notions of self-projection and doubling. Investigating the idea that we create our own metaphoric ghosts that stand in as surrogates for our fears, anxieties and repressions, the firmness of our identity boundaries is brought into question. Although the paintings explore dualities and splitting of the self, at their core they are testaments to strength and resilience, touching on universal themes of identity and self-acceptance.”

– Monika Viktoria Diak, 2020