The highly anticipated TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles opens at the TarraWarra Museum of Art this Saturday 29 March, curated by Yorta Yorta woman, writer and curator Kimberley Moulton.
From 29 March to 20 July, TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles features 23 artists who centre regenerative practice and relational transcultural connections to land, object and memory, and includes over 20 newly commissioned works.
Inaugurated 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 – the seminal south-eastern First Nations political movement held on 26 January on the 150th anniversary of the colonisation of Australia – where activist and change agent Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls KCVO OBE called for equal rights and an end to colonial oppression, stating “we do not want chicken-feed… we are not chickens; we are eagles.”
Anchored in this sentiment and important political moment in the nation’s history, We Are Eagles shares cross-cultural knowledge and stories through a network of regenerative practice that disrupts colonial temporalities.
Connecting across cultures, beyond borders and through waterways, sky country and stars, to the totemic eagle and more-than-human connections, the exhibition shares the multiplicity of ways to connect to history, Ancestral knowledge, and expansive futures.
“We’re 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,” said Director of TarraWarra Museum of Art, Dr Victoria Lynn.
“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,” said Lynn.
“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,” said Curator, Kimberley Moulton.
“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,” said Moulton.
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 looks to restore the spirit of the wangimu bubupal and the history it surfaces.
Large-scale installations transforming the gallery space include Shireen Taweel’s project Pilgrimage of a Hajjanaut, 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; and a project of regeneration with a handmade cultural belonging and soundscape created by Yorta Yorta/Wurundjeri artist Moorina Bonini with her family on Country.
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.
We Are Eagles includes ambitious new work by Pitjantjatjara artist Iluwanti Ken who shares the eagle story from her community along with a collaborative work with her niece Yaritji Young; and 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.
The full list of artists participating in TarraWarra Biennial 2025: 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.
The opening weekend is marked by a special “In Conversation” with curator Kimberley Moulton and participating artists Gunybi Ganambar, lluwanti Ken, Daniel Riley, Shireen Taweel, Angela Tiatia, Lisa Waup, Warraba Weatherall and Yaritji Young, with visitors invited to hear about the creative processes and inspirations behind their work.
TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles
TarraWarra Museum of Art, 313 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville
Exhibition: 29 March – 20 July 2025
Entry fees apply
For more information, visit: www.twma.com.au for details.
Image: Teho Ropeyarn, Them Old People, 2025 and Nadia Hernández, En Todo Tiempo (At All Times), 2024–25, installation view, TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles – photo by Brook James | Gunybi Ganambarr, Milŋurr Ŋaymil I, 2024 and Milŋurr Ŋaymil II, 2024, installation view, TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles. Courtesy of the artist and Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka – photo by Brook James