culture

First Nations artists to star in major new Buxton Contemporary exhibition

Phoebe Blogg - April 28, 2025

Hayley Millar Baker, still from Eternity the Butterfly. (Image: supplied)

The University of Melbourne has announced the launch of a new major new exhibition at Buxton Contemporary.

The veil will showcase the works of artists including some of Australia's top First Nations creatives, with Hayley Millar Baker, Glenda Nicholls, Lena Yarinkura, and Lisa Waup.

Running from June 27 to November 1, the veil has been curated by senior curator, Art Museums at University of Melbourne Hannah Presley, with assistant curator Isabella Hone-Saunders, with the aim of offering viewers a deep exploration into identity, memory and cultural resilience.

Through new and recent works, each artist journeys into the realm of the spiritual, exposing otherworldly experiences that are central to our existence yet often concealed.

A Marri Ngarr curator living on Taungurung Country, Presley shared her thoughts on the new exhibition, confirming that the artworks featured in the veil serve as somewhat of a portal or a liminal space.

"There have always been places described as transitional, spooky, or strange spaces that hum with energy, where the air feels thin and the light is dappled. These uncanny or supernatural qualities are reflected in the exhibition, revealing a familiarity with the spirit world, which in some cases profoundly influences the artists' everyday lives," she said.

"The artworks in 'the veil' serve as a portal or a liminal space created through the expression of culture, memory, and emotional residue."

Central to the exhibition is a major new film from Millar Baker, titled Eternity the Butterfly. Commissioned by Presley for the veil, Millar Baker's first film Nyctinasty was commissioned by Hetti Perkins for the National Gallery of Australia and her second, The Umbra by Kimberley Moulton for Rising Festival.

This will be the first time all three films will be presented together. Belonging to both the Gunditjmara, Djabwurrung, and Nira-Bulok Taungurung peoples through her maternal lineage, and has Anglo-Indian and Luso-Brasileiro ancestry on her paternal side, Baker's artworks bring something niche and unique to the exhibition.

It is this confluence of cultural backgrounds that informs Millar Baker's practice, anchored by a reclamation of the power and agency found in her Indigenous spiritual inheritance and ancestral connection.

"Eternity the Butterfly reflects on the transcendence narratives of Aboriginal peoples, grounded in their deep spiritual connections to ancestors and the colonial horrors they continue to endure. The film embodies a cyclical view of life, death and rebirth central to Aboriginal philosophies," she said.

*Glenda Nicholls. (Image: Wayne Quilliam)*

A new University of Melbourne acquisition by Nicholls, a Waddi Waddi, Ngarrindjeri and Yorta Yorta artist and master weaver, titled The Reflection Net, will be presented at Buxton Contemporary for the first time. Suspended high in the gallery, the large-scale woven work evokes Milloo, the Murray River, reflected in the sky, with hand-crafted feather flowers floating like birds' overhead.

Nicholls was gifted her net making technique from her ancestors, waking from a dream with knowledge of the knots required. Since making her first net in 2011, she has gone on to create a strong body of work, reviving her ancestral net making practice, ensuring it is shared and protected for future generations.

*Glenda Nicholls, Miwi Milloo (detail) 2020, jute, feathers, wire, paper tape, NGV Collection. (Image: Tom Ross)*

Naarm/Melbourne based artist Hannah Gartside will also present new and existing sculptural works, spanning a period of ten years. Her work is both characteristically sensual and poetic, transforming and in one case animating, found fabrics and clothing to articulate experiences and sensations of longing, tenderness, desire and fury.

Gartside has created a new work for the veil, presented alongside earlier pieces, including Sarah, a well-tailored kinetic sculpture paying homage to the formidable French actress Sarah Bernhardt, originally commissioned by Hannah Presley for Primavera at the MCA, Sydney in 2021. By reworking worn materials with care and through meticulous labour-intensive cutting and sewing processes, Gartside harnesses their inherent ability to act as portals to imperceptible experiences, emotions and memories.

A celebrated mixed-cultural First Nations artist and curator, Waup will reimagine her ambitious installation holding Country, a recent acquisition to the University of Melbourne art collection.

Waup's practice encompasses a diverse range of media, including weaving, printmaking, photography, sculpture, fashion, and digital art. With a deep connection to the symbolic power of materials, her work reflects her personal experiences, family history, Country, and broader historical narratives. holding Country comprises 365 individually screen-printed sandbags, created in response to her experience of a major flood in Northern Victoria.

These bags become repositories of memories, traditions, and human experiences, and in this sense, they are protectors of Country, with each bag telling a unique story inked into the very fabric of its design. The work serves as a catalyst for dialogue, inviting us to consider each of our individual responsibilities to care for and protect Country.

*Lisa Waup, holding Country 2023 (detail) University of Melbourne collection. (Image:supplied)*

A senior Kune artist, Yarinkura's innovative sculptural practice has played a foundational role in the evolution of contemporary fibre art in Arnhem Land. She is widely recognised for her ambitious pandanus and paperbark sculptures which reimagine ancestral narratives of animals and spirit beings through ambitious, playful and sophisticated textural forms.

For the veil, Yarinkura has created a new series of Gnarr (spiders) and two large-scale works that tell the story of Wititj and the Two Sisters and their consequential interaction with Ngalyod the serpent. Living and working between Maningrida and outstations, Buluhkaduru and Ankabadbirri in Arnhem Land, Lena Yarinkura has profoundly influenced the trajectory of fibre-based art in the region.

University of Melbourne, Art Museums director Charlotte Day said Buxton Contemporary "is thrilled to present 'the veil', an introspective and immersive exhibition, that brings together a diverse group of artists and makers spanning different cultural backgrounds and generations".

"Featuring a major new commission as well as recent University art collection acquisitions, the exhibition sees a rich array of works—from photography and film to fibre art, printmaking and sculpture—offering unique perspectives and deep engagements with the otherworldly."