Deborah Paauwe was born in the USA in 1972 and in 1985 arrived in Australia. In 1994 she completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Visual Arts) at the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia and in 2000 completed her MA in Fine Art at the Chelsea School of Art in London, UK. In the last 8 years Deborah has held more than 12 solo exhibitions within Australia, Spain and New Zealand. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally including the Moët & Chandon Touring Exhibition in 1999, ARCO ’99, International Art Fair, Madrid; Telling Tales: The Child in Contemporary Photography, Monash University, VIC and touring Australia, Chemistry, Art in South Australia 1990-2000, Art Gallery of South Australia in 2000; Fotonoviembre 2001 & 2003, photographic biennial, Centro de Fotografía, Canary Islands, Spain and Photographica Australis, Sala de Exposiciones del Canal de Isabel II, Madrid in 2002; the Naarden Foto Festival, Netherlands in 2003; the 2004 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, and as part of Photographica Australis 2004 the Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh & Fine Art Museum, Taiwan. Deborah was awarded the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship in 1999 and was recently commissioned for the Hermes Photography Project by Hermes Australia. She won the Living Art Award and The Gerda Pinter Award both in conjunction with the 2002 Conrad Jupiters Art Prize and was the winner of the 32nd Alice Prize Award, Alice Springs. She is represented in national and international collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia and Art Gallery of Western Australia. Deborah has just returned from New York City where she undertook the Australia Council studio residency program.

Born in Pennsylvania with a mixed Dutch and Chinese background, her early childhood was spent in Singapore before settling in Adelaide at the age of 13. Now, still only 31, she is ranked amongst the top ten most collectable photomedia artists in the country. Her first video piece, Beautiful Games was shown in October at the Centre for Contemporary Photography during the 2003 Melbourne Festival and a new body of photographic work opened a month later at Fotonoviembre 2003, a international photographic biennial in the Canary Islands. Her photographs were recently shown in the National Gallery of Thailand in Bangkok and Singapore Art Museum as part of the Photographica Australis exhibition, which is currently the Australian entry in the Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka. Deborah Paauwe was one of the featured artists selected the 2004 Adelaide Biennale and she is the first photomedia artist to be selected for the annual SALA book, a monograph published for the South Australian Living Artists festival. She has recently exhibited at the Naarden FotoFestival in the Netherlands.