TarraWarra Biennial exhibition We Are Eagles is set to feature newly commissioned works by 22 artists who centre regenerative practice and connections to land, object and memory.
The 2025 event will run from March 29 to July 20.
In 2006 the TarraWarra Biennial was established to identify new trends in contemporary Australian art through an experimental curatorial platform.
The ninth TarraWarra Biennial's title - We Are Eagles - is derived from a speech given at the 1938 Day of Mourning (January 26) protest by Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls KCVO OBE, who said: "We do not want chicken-feed. We are not chickens; we are eagles."
In 2025, We Are Eagles will share cross-cultural knowledge and stories. Connecting across cultures, beyond borders and through waterways, sky country and stars, the exhibition will share the multiplicity of ways to connect to history, ancestral knowledge, and expansive futures.
TarraWarra Museum of Art director Dr Victoria Lynn said the museum is "delighted to have Kimberley Moulton curate the next edition of the TarraWarra Biennial, which is one of the most anticipated exhibitions in the Australian cultural calendar and a dynamic platform for contemporary art and ideas".
"Under Moulton's visionary curation, moving beyond traditional museum display techniques, We Are Eagles highlights the creative practices of artists that look to reclaim cultural space in innovative ways."
Talented curator and proud Yorta Yorta woman Moulton said through this exhibition she is applying a First Peoples' curatorial approach to a wide range of contemporary Australian artists - hoping to further share ways in which creative practice can re-story our connections to object and memory.
"We Are Eagles is an exhibition that considers the relationality between cultural material, memory and place and the ways embodied knowledge disrupts coloniality and prescribed notions of identity within the Australian imaginary," she said.
"Through this exhibition I am applying a First Peoples curatorial approach to a wide range of contemporary Australian artists and hope to share ways in which creative practice can re-story our connections to object and memory."
Foundational to the exhibition is a new sound work by Wurundjeri woman and artist Brooke Wandin responding to a wangimu bubupal (a child's boomerang) on loan from Museums Victoria. Recorded in language, the work strives to restore the spirit of the wangimu bubupal and the history it surfaces.
Large-scale installations transforming the gallery space also include Shireen Taweel's project Pilgrimage of a Hajjonaut, exploring celestial navigation technologies and Islamic feminist narratives though a speculative fiction lens in relation to migration and pilgrimage; Venezuelan-born artist Nadia Hernández's mixed media work that draws inspiration from Venezuelan protest songs written in the last century; a project of regeneration with a handmade cultural belonging and soundscape created by Yorta Yorta/Wurundjeri artist Moorina Bonini with her family on Country; and Angela Tiatia's new three-channel video work, Render, documenting the embodiment of an ancestral chant of Pacific cosmology, intricately interwoven with images of Sāmoan landscapes and temples that speak to the climate change of her homelands and environmental concerns for us all.
Installation view, Moorina Bonini: Wanyarra (Active) Code-Switching, MADA Gallery, Monash University, 2023. (Image: Andrew Curtis)
Installation view, Shireen Taweel: 5362 nocturne, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2024. (Image: Alex Lovell-Smith)
We Are Eagles also includes ambitious new works by Pitjantjatjara artist Iluwanti Ken who shares the eagle story from her community along with a collaborative work with her niece Yaritji Young; a series of paintings and ceramics created by artists Laurel Robinson, Cythia Hardie, Amy Briggs and Jack Anselmi, who work out of Kaiela Arts, a thriving Aboriginal arts centre in Shepparton, Victoria, situated on the traditional lands of the Yorta Yorta Nation; a large-scale installation by Kamilaroi artist Warraba Weatherall focuses on the repatriation of intangible cultural property and knowledge systems, exploring their contemporary role in communities; applying a critical lens to Western museological practices, Nathan Beard presents a series of abstracted sculptural works speaking to Thai Ancestral belongings; and a new film from wani toaishara looks at themes of citizenship, identity and belonging.
Kicking things off with a morning of engaging artist talks on Saturday the 29th of March 2025, a range of public and education programs will be presented in conjunction with We Are Eagles.
The full list of artists participating in TarraWarra Biennial 2025 is: Nathan Beard, Moorina Bonini, Maree Clarke, Gunybi Ganambarr, Nadia Hernández, Lisa Hilli, Kaiela Arts and Jack Anselmi, Amy Briggs, Cynthia Hardie and Laurel Robinson, Iluwanti Ken, Brendan Kennedy, Daniel Riley, Teho Ropeyarn, wani toaishara, Shireen Taweel, Lyn Thorpe, Angela Tiatia, Brooke Wandin, Lisa Waup, Warraba Weatherall, Yaritji Young.
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