Trefor Prest

In 2014 director Paul Cox in filming his feature Force of Destiny (2015) based on Cox's experience with liver cancer and a liver transplant, used Prest's studio and work to portray the film's hero (David Wenham) as a sculptor.

At auction in 2003 at Christies, Prest's Taffrail Delights (1989) in wood, copper, tin, steel, stainless steel (152 x 65 x 42 cm) was purchased for AUD 4,465.00 beating an estimate of AUD 800 - AUD 1,200

Prest lectured in Sculpture at the University of Ballarat from 1995-1996.

His design for an elaborate ceremonial mace was commissioned by Federation University, Ballarat, in 1995.

In reviewing Prest's 1990 solo show at Pinacotheca gallery in The Age Peter Hill wrote that;

In 1982 Prest, his wife Belinda, an artist and dance and yoga teacher whom he met at the Gallery School, and their family of three, moved from a hilly rural block Kalorama in the Dandenongs to Sandon in Central Victoria. He was employed at Barkla Engineering in Newstead making truck trays, and has for 30 years been an active volunteer in the Country Fire Authority Newstead brigade. After six months in Sandon he moved to renovate and expand an 1890 miner's cottage on 12Ha in Strangways and to concentrate on his sculpture and family.

In 1978, critic John Davies, in reviewing the Seventh Mildura Sculpture Triennial judged "Trefor Prest's Surreal, machine-like Tales from the valley below, exhibited in the Bakery…one of the finest pieces in the Triennial."

Prest completed his diploma in 1973; a single arts subject, Modern European History, at La Trobe University, Melbourne; and welding and structural drawing, at the RMIT during 1972-74; and undertook graduate studies at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School during 1974-75. He started exhibiting in 1971.

He was conscripted into the Australian army, and while a student living in Lytton Street, Glenroy and completing a Diploma of Art (sculpture) at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, he and Stephen Benwell were charged and fined $50 for pasting posters advertising the 1971 Vietnam Moratorium march on walls and front windows of the new Gallery building. Three female accomplices were not fined and Lenton Parr, principal of the National Gallery Art School, was reported as saying; "there was no damage to the building, so the trustees were prepared to overlook the matter," and "the trustees believe it a pity the matter had not been referred to me originally."

While studying, Prest visited the Cape Schanck area to enjoy diving and solitude, and in the early 1970s purchased a building block there for $500 on which he practised his welding in constructing a small underground building with second-hand materials that he brought from Melbourne on his motor-bike. After the 1980s it fell into disrepair and he sold the block. During 1974 Prest travelled and studied in the UK and Europe and again in 1976, visiting the UK, Europe, Middle East, and Asia.

Trefor Prest (26 June 1945, Cardiff, UK) is a Welsh-born Australian sculptor living in Victoria since 1961. He produces highly-finished intricate and puzzling, often humorous, quasi-mechanical or machine-age constructions that are the subject of solo shows in major public and commercial galleries and feature in national and international group exhibitions, including the Mildura Sculpture Triennials.

Trefor Geraint Prest was born on 26 June 1945 in Cardiff to John and Olive Prest (nee Hamlin), a teacher, and spent his childhood in Barrow a major South Wales coal port , and was the sole sibling of younger sister Lynda. Memory of the town's extensive industrial landscapes and its machinery were to become an inspiration for Prest's sculpture. He studied at the Croydon College of Art in 1960, but was expelled from the course before migrating with his family to Australia on 2 May 1961 when he was sixteen on the S.S. Fairsky from Southampton under the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme.