Swathi Madike didn’t expect the moment to feel the way it did. When she was announced as the recipient of the 2025 Noel Waite AO Exhibitors Award at the Victorian Artists Society’s Artist of the Year competition, the recognition came not from a distant panel but from her peers, artists who understood her work from the inside out. “I was surprised at how I felt,” Madike says. “Some of them are my peers, some of them have taught me, some of them are my mentors. It felt like a g