TarraWarra International 2026: System Release brings together ten artists from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia and Mexico who reach into the chaos of global precarity to create new systems of order across a wide range of media.

Curated by Dr Emily Cormack, the exhibition proposes a different understanding of order as a kind of friendship with chaos, presenting personal and collective strategies for making sense of a rapidly changing world.

Responding to recent global events that have exposed the vulnerability of civic order, the exhibition challenges the assumption that a so‐called "rules-based order" is what holds society together.

It frames collapse as a release, inviting audiences to consider alternative systems of knowledge and ways of being grounded in First Nations thinking, posthumanism, collective intelligence, and more-than-human worldviews.

System Release is accompanied by a dynamic series of public programs, including artist talks, workshops and a day of music exploring the relationship between structure and spontaneity as a way of thinking about order and chaos in sound.

Events include a children's kite-making workshop inspired by the traditional Māori practice of manu tukutuku, a live performance by composer Rosie Westbrook and an ensemble of eight musicians, and an afternoon of workshops and conversation with BLAK Environment collective.

A fully illustrated publication will accompany the exhibition with a foreword by TarraWarra Museum of Art Director Dr Victoria Lynn and essays by Dr Cormack, Dr Lana Lopesi, and Stan Grant.

Installation view of TarraWarra International 2026: System Release, 21st March - 5th July 2026, featuring work by Francis Carmody. (Image: Craate Creative)

"We look to artists to expose, explore and interpret precarious global conditions, offering us new perspectives and new ways of being in the world," Dr Cormack, who was appointed Head of Exhibitions and Programs at TarraWarra last April, said.

"As international systems of law and governance become increasingly contested, this exhibition forecasts creative approaches that move beyond the tenuous, imperfect pacts that have held the last century in place.

"As these systems collapse, they also release, creating space for new organising principles, where humans might develop with technology, where Indigenous knowledge is more central, and where the interconnectedness between humans and nature is reaffirmed."

The exhibition features artists Daniel Boyd (Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Yuggera and Bundjalung man from North Queensland, Australia, and North Pentecost Island in Vanuatu), Francis Carmody (Naarm/Melbourne, Australia), Megan Cope (Quandamooka, south-east Queensland, Australia), José Dávila (Mexico), Alicia Frankovich (Aotearoa/New Zealand and Naarm/Melbourne, Australia), Marco Fusinato (Naarm/Melbourne, Australia), Nikau Hindin (Te Rarawa/Ngāpuhi, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand), Nicholas Mangan (Naarm/Melbourne, Australia), Dane Mitchell (Aotearoa/New Zealand and Naarm/Melbourne, Australia), and Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwhareta, Aotearoa/New Zealand).

Working across sculpture, installation, moving image and assemblage, each artist brings forward ideas and objects that illuminate the shifting interplay between order and chaos underpinning civic society.

Māori artists Nikau Hindin (Te Rarawa/Ngāpuhi) and Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) draw on Indigenous knowledge systems as central to proposing new futures, whilst Indigenous artist Daniel Boyd (Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Yuggera and Bundjalung) revisits his commission for the TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask, in which vinyl stenopeic lenses are applied to the Museum's north window.

The TarraWarra International series was inaugurated in 2013 with Animate/Inanimate, followed by Pierre Huyghe (2015), All that is solid... (2017) and The Tangible Trace (2019).

"Each exhibition has brought compelling and relevant international artists to TarraWarra Museum of Art, often in dialogue with Australian artists," said Dr Lynn.

"We are delighted to welcome Dr Emily Cormack back to the Museum - she curated the TarraWarra Biennial 2018: From Will to Form - and we look forward to this imaginative and thoughtful new iteration of the TarraWarra International."

Established in 2013, the TarraWarra International series supports Australian artists to present their work within a global context by exhibiting alongside leading contemporary practitioners from abroad. The initiative situates their practices within international conversations and expands opportunities for critical engagement with contemporary art.

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