This year, our team worked closely with public galleries and museums, supporting a raft of projects and exhibitions that included our artists. Surveys such as Too Deadly: 10 Years of Tarnanthi, TarraWarra Biennial – We Are Eagles, and RMOA’s State of the Art: Reimagining Queensland were just a few highlights.
Explore more of the exhibitions our artists were in, in 2025, below:
Brian Robinson and Teho Ropeyarn | Art Gallery of South Australia | Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi
A major new exhibition celebrates Tarnanthi’s first decade. Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi assembles more than 200 diverse works of outstanding contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art seen in previous Tarnanthi Festivals. The exhibition both revisits key Tarnanthi works acquired by AGSA and revitalises them with fresh insights and unique dialogues with other works and across the Gallery.
Brian Robinson | World Expo Osaka 2025
With the theme of ‘Chasing the Sun,’ the Australia Pavillion is an immersive experience that “explores Australia’s unique energy, our diverse and warm people, our talent and creativity, and our stunning natural environment.” Mirroring Australia’s connection to Country and First Nations sovereignty, the Pavillion moves across three sensory environments: Land Country, Sky Country, and Sea Country.
The Sea Country environment features the Pavillion’s largest installation where Brian Robinson’s ‘Uruy Dhangadh’ and ‘Minaral patterning’ are projected onto sea creatures, brought to life by animation from Spinifex Group. In this installation, Robinson transposes the marine environment and ancestral stories of Waiben (Thursday Island) onto a global stage.
World Expo is a momentous event that champions global collaboration and innovation, taking place every 5 years. The 2025 World Expo takes place in the waterfront destination of Yumeshima, Osaka, with the theme of ‘Designing Future Society for our Lives.’
Images: ‘Sea Country exhibition at the Australia Pavilion, World Expo 2025 Osaka.’ ©Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Brian Robinson | University of Queensland Art Museum | To Come Together as Water
to come together as water unites cultural and creative practices as an expansive reimagining of water protection. Across deep subterranean basins, inland rivers, tidal flats, coastlines and seas, the exhibition reflects on our shared responsibilities to saltwater and freshwater Country. Anchored by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and lived experience, artists translate how we care for place and sustain community, knowledge, and life worlds.
Through resistance, regeneration, collaboration and observation, featured practices emphasise the indelible interconnectedness of waterways, which connect to an extended network of kinship: human and more-than-human, plants, animals, tides and wind. In these connections, artworks reveal the relationships and lessons of responsibility developed over time, generations and seasons, that continue as culture. Rising to the surface, are the extreme conditions faced by saltwater and freshwater communities, each with specificity and insights into past and present methods of water stewardship in the decline of balanced ecosystems, drought, pollution and increasing sea levels.
to come together as water gathers us all in a shared responsibility of place, and foregrounds responsive and timely practices alongside new movements of collective action that are shaping futures suggestive and resilient against immense change.
This exhibition is presented as part of the long-term research initiative Blue Assembly, which calls attention to the ways in which oceanic spaces are inextricable to the survival of all species.
Cara-Ann Simpson | Woollahra Municipal Council | Double Vision
‘Double Vision’ is a digital public art project run by Woollahra Council. The digital screen, installed under the escalators to the Woollahra Library (Kiaora Place) in Double Bay features a range of varied video or other screen based artworks from different artists. Works displayed on the screen aims to engage and provide a point of difference to the public in this space.
Darren Blackman | Rockhampton Museum of Art | State of the Art: Reimagining Queensland
An introspective and memory-honouring consideration of Queensland is the premise of State of the Art: Reimagining Queensland. This showcase of Queensland artists contests and explores the idea of the State in all of its conceptual and geographical character. Artists blur borders to clarify the meaning of Queensland through stories about people and places before and since colonisation. This diverse assembly of Queensland artists remind us of who and where we come from, and explore where we are going.
Darren Blackman | Redcliffe Art Gallery | 15 Artists
Jackie Ryan | Writers on the Wall | Brisbane Powerhouse
Stepping into the Brisbane Powerhouse during the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival, visitors encounter Writers on the Wall—a vibrant new exhibition by Jackie Ryan that transforms the Underground Theatre Foyer into a celebration of creativity, storytelling, and portraiture.
Marian Drew | Goulburn Regional Art Gallery | Horizons
Horizons explores connections between the body, the natural world and the built environment. The term horizons can indicate limitlessness, opportunity and optimism, or, conversely, be seen as a perceived barrier, feared sense of the unknown, or a warning sign. The exhibition embraces the breadth of these interpretations, looking at the ways we desire to draw close to the environment while also acknowledging the constructed physical, digital and mental barriers created between humankind and the landscape.
Marian Drew | HOTA | Cloudy with a Chance of Art
Eyes to the sky! HOTA’s Children’s Gallery is a place for daydreaming and creativity. The sky is the limit to your imagination, so we encourage families to look up and see amazing historical to contemporary artworks by Australian artists who also look to the sky for inspiration. A curated display of cloud artworks will set the scene for play and creativity ‘beneath the clouds’ in the Children’s Gallery.
Prita Tina Yeganeh and Marian Drew | The Condensery | Volatile Terrain
Human activity maps our world, alters topography, creates pathways, destroys habitat, builds infrastructure, mines the Earth’s crust, and moulds the landscape. Volatile Terrain is The Condensery’s inaugural Harvest Biennial exhibition, and explores the intersections and divergences of geography and geology, with consideration to a world in constant flux. The exhibition provides an opportunity to examine how humanity lives on Earth, as well as interacts, destructs and rehabilitates it.
Sonja & Elisa Jane Carmichael | University of Technology Sydney Gallery and Collection | All That is Alive
An iterative touring exhibition co-commissioned by UTS Gallery & Art Collection and La Trobe Art Institute, All That is Alive brings together 12 Australian artists and collectives working with living systems.
Artists: Tully Arnot, Saskia van Pagee Anderson, Kylie Banyard, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Sonja Carmichael, Madeleine Collie, Other Matter, Sarah Poulgrain, Mandy Quadrio, Keg de Souza, Magnetic Topographies, Ivey Wawn.
Drawing on ancient kinships and ancestral knowledge, mycelial intelligence and fermentation, non-hierarchical and interspecies relations, machine desire and collective agency, the artworks in the exhibition engage with the interconnected practices that sustain and define life – human and otherwise.
Presented across two sites, the exhibition responds to local conditions, allowing artworks to speak not just of place, but from it. Across dance, weaving, printmaking, sculpture, and publishing, regeneration is a refrain throughout many of the works.
The exhibition also looks inward, foregrounding the often-invisible labour, care, and institutional memory that sustains the museum. In collaboration with the staff, artists repurpose tools and spaces and reshape habits and routines, revealing the museum itself as a living system, shaped by relationships.
All That is Alive brings together diverse practices to reflect on life in its many forms, evoking the entangled relations that sustain us and imagining new ways of living together.
Sonja & Elisa Jane Carmichael | PHOTO Australia | On Country: Photography from Australia
This landmark exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles features 17 Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and collectives exploring aspects of being ‘on Country’ – a term embodied by First Peoples in Australia to describe the lands, waterways, seas and cosmos to which they are connected.
Sonja & Elisa Jane Carmichael | Casula Powerhouse | Under the Big Blue Sky
Under the Big Blue Sky features works by artists from across the country, each exploring blue in their own way and highlighting its visual, emotional, and symbolic significance.
The exhibition will transform the entire arts centre, including a dramatic installation in our Turbine Hall, over 15 artist projects in our ground-floor galleries, a display of works from the Liverpool City Council Art Collection in our Theatre Gallery, and an immersive underwater-themed installation Rainbow, Mermaid, Fireworks by Emily Crockford and Rosie Deacon originally commissioned by Bondi Pavillion, courtesy the artists and Studio A in our Upper Turbine West Gallery on Level 1.
Sonja & Elisa Jane Carmichael | Cairns Art Gallery | Contemporary Indigenous Weaving
Weaving is an ancient artform practiced throughout the globe. The styles, purposes and materiality of each woven form is influenced by the locality, the land and Country, of their creators. The artists in Our Stories: Contemporary Indigenous Weaving exemplify the connection of practice to place, demonstrating vastly different responses to the theme of ‘my land’ that reflect the diversity of their individual homelands and culture. From the red dirt of the central desert to the lush green rainforests and seasonal wetlands of Northern Queensland, to the islands and sea Country of the Torres Strait and Minjerribah, each work embodies the unique experiences, histories and stories of that Country.
Sonja & Elisa Jane Carmichael | Redland Art Gallery | Wildflowering by Design
Wildflowering by Design is an exhibition that explores contemporary responses to our botanical and wildflower heritage, presenting works by Queensland artists from various art and design fields. Many women, both well-known and unsung, have highlighted the significance, functionality and beauty of Australian wildflowers. These include Traditional Custodians, illustrators who have documented native plants, and artists and designers who have used wildflowers as materials, subjects and inspiration.
Sonja & Elisa Jane Carmichael | Art Gallery of South Australia | Radical Textiles
The use of textiles by artists and designers has long been associated with moments of profound social change and political rupture. From tapestry and embroidery to quilting and tailoring, in the hands of artists, textiles are defined by tension and transformation, resistance and activism. Textiles are a means of time travel and truth-telling.
Textiles galvanise communities. Through wars, pandemics and disasters, textiles have offered a way to mobilise social and cultural groups and build connections. In the late nineteenth century, British artist and designer William Morris sought to counter the mechanisation and mass-production of the Industrial Revolution by weaving tapestries on a manual loom with hand-dyed thread. Today, many artists are experimenting with the materials and techniques of textile design as a ‘slow making’ antidote to the high-speed digital age.
From William Morris to Sonia Delaunay, Radical Textiles celebrates the cutting-edge innovations, enduring traditions and bodies of shared knowledge that have been folded into fabric and cloth over the past 150 years. Showcasing the work of more than 100 artists, designers and activists, this major exhibition draws on AGSA’s international, Australian and First Nations collections of textiles and fashion, augmented by sculpture, painting, photography and the moving image, alongside several new commissions.
Sonja & Elisa Jane Carmichael | Museum of Brisbane | Stories You Wear: Magpie Goose
Museum of Brisbane is excited to collaborate with Magpie Goose, a proudly Aboriginal owned and led fashion and social enterprise, to celebrate extraordinary First Peoples cultural stories and designs.
This exclusive to Brisbane exhibition, developed in close collaboration with Magpie Goose owners Amanda Hayman (Wakka Wakka and Kalkadoon) and Troy Casey (Kamilaroi), offers a deep dive into the work of some of the region’s most talented First Peoples artists and designers. Using clothing as a canvas for storytelling, this exciting collaboration will connect audiences with the rich and diverse cultural expressions of First Peoples communities in Queensland and beyond.
Tamika Grant-Iramu, Brian Robinson, Teho Ropeyarn | Redcliffe Art Gallery | Spirits in the Ink
Teddy Horton | Metro Arts | The Churchie 2025
The churchie emerging art prize is one of Australia’s leading art prizes for new and emerging contemporary artists.
‘the churchie’ stands out from other prizes through its genuine engagement with emerging artists, providing professional development opportunities and showcasing their practices to peers, collectors, critics, museum curators, the media, and the community at large.
Teho Ropeyarn | McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery | Current
Since bipotaim—the Torres Strait Creole word meaning ‘before time’— oral histories have been one of the main ways that Indigenous people have ensured that important traditional knowledge is not lost. For Teho Ropeyarn, of the Angkamuthi and Yadhaykanu clans which settled Injinoo in Western Cape York, that vehicle for the safeguarding of tradition is printmaking.
Ropeyarn’s prints, brought to life with energetic design and colour, demonstrate an intimate understanding of the natural world. They convey a knowledge of specific land and waters, in Ropeyarn’s words ‘from the inside out’. Further, he says ‘the stories embedded in these prints are not just about place—they are about family, belonging, and continuity.’
Printmaking has become synonymous with the art of the Indigenous people of the Torres Strait and far north Queensland. The processes of this contemporary medium echo age-old traditions of carving, etching and incising patterns onto ritual and trade objects which were used throughout the islands of the Pacific. Modern technologies and innovation have changed the cultural landscape of printmaking in the region as it has everywhere in the world. Ropeyarn is at the vanguard of this art form, exploring its potential in expanded spatial practice, and demonstrating that tradition is not static, it is shifting and dynamic, and evolves in order to survive.
Teho Ropeyarn | TarraWarra Biennale | We are Eagles
TarraWarra Museum of Art today announced the title and full artist list for the highly anticipated TarraWarra Biennial 2025, curated by Yorta Yorta woman, writer and curator Kimberley Moulton. Presented from 29 March to 20 July 2025, the exhibition titled We Are Eagles features newly commissioned works by 22 artists who centre regenerative practice
and relational transcultural connections to land, object and memory.
