TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles

TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles is an exhibition of new and existing works by 23 artists and makers from across Australia that centre regenerative practice and relational connections.  

The title comes from an important political movement in 1938 called The Day of Mourning, held on the 150th anniversary of the colonisation of Australia, during which Aboriginal leaders called for a resolution to be passed against the callous treatment of their people and for full citizenship status and equality. At this gathering the Yorta Yorta visionary Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls KCVO OBE stated that;   

‘we do not want chicken-feed … we are not chickens; we are eagles’. 

Inspired by this assertion of cultural strength and the power to soar in freedom and Ancestral knowing, the exhibition shares cross-cultural knowledge through a conceptual framework of regeneration, the disruption of coloniality and the restoration of the mulana (Yorta Yorta for spirit). The artists in the Biennial consider the ways in which  knowledge can be renewed through creative practice,and the spirit of memory, cultural material and place can be restored. This embodied knowledge is a core mechanism that disrupts coloniality and prescribed notions of identity within the Australian imaginary. However, these interventions are not wholly centered on resistance— they recognise multiple truths, self-determination and love that binds us to place and each other, beyond colonial realities.  

Connecting across cultures from this continent and beyond its borders, through waterways, community kinships and the stars, to the totemic eagle and animals that guide them, the artists share their truth. From critically unpacking the collecting histories of museums and current geopolitical realities, to considering the body as an archive of generational wisdom, the works in We Are Eagles converge across various temporal spaces to re-story and remember.   

–Kimberley Moulton (Yorta Yorta), Curator 

Kimberley Moulton would like to thank Aunty Pam Pedersen, esteemed Elder and daughter of Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls for her support to work with his words. We Are Eagles also honours the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people, their traditional lands on which TarraWarra Museum of Art stands, and their creator Bunjil, the wedge-tailed eagle. 

The artists participating in TarraWarra Biennial 2025 are:Ancestor, Jack Anselmi, Nathan Beard, Moorina Bonini, Amy Briggs, Maree Clarke, Gunybi Ganambarr, Cynthia Hardie, Nadia Hernández, Lisa Hilli, Iluwanti Ken, Brendan Kennedy, Daniel Riley, Laurel Robinson, Teho Ropeyarn, Shireen Taweel, Lyn Thorpe, Angela Tiatia, wani toaishara, Brooke Wandin, Lisa Waup, Warraba Weatherall, Yaritji Young.

Established in 2006, the TarraWarra Biennial is as an experimental and thematic platform for presenting new contemporary and cutting-edge work.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body; the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria; and the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.