TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles is a powerful assertion of cultural strength

Australia Broadcast Center

22-04-2025

There's a quote that has long moved Yorta Yorta curator and artist Kimberley Moulton.
It's from elder Aboriginal Australian Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls who, in 1938 during a political movement called The Day of Mourning, told leaders and community gathered that day: 'We do not want chicken-feed … we are not chickens; we are eagles.'
"This line has always stayed with me, it's so poetic," Moulton says.
Moulton is also the adjunct curator of Indigenous Art at Tate Modern, London, and the senior curator of Rising Festival.
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It's the inspiration for the new Biennial 2025 at regional art gallery TarraWarra Museum of Art, which features new works by 23 contemporary First Nations and other Australian artists.
We Are Eagles is a mixture of paintings, sculptural works, ceramics and film made in response to regenerative practices and trans-cultural connections to land.
Maree Clarke, whose Wurneet Buath (River Reed) Vessel is one of the works at the Biennial, was the first living Victorian Aboriginal artist to have a solo show featured in the National Gallery of Victoria in 2021.
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"That day [in 1938] Sir Doug asked leaders and the community gathered to come together for a resolution and acknowledge full citizenship and equality of all First Nations people," says Moulton, curator of the Biennial.
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It was a gathering about our humanity … It [was] an assertion of cultural strength and power in ancestral knowing.
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Now, with the blessing of Yorta Yorta Elder Aunty Pam Pedersen, Moulton has asked artists to make works in response to it.
Exploring 'Aboriginal ways of being'
We Are Eagles bridges conversations around cultural regeneration, and colonial disruption and its impact on storytelling.
Moulton wants to help give a voice to those stories silenced by colonisation.
Emerging visual artist Moorina Bonini turns to her Yorta Yorta heritage as a starting point for her new work, a song that pays homage to the skill of canoe making by her elders.
It's part of a conceptual film titled Matha, which connects directly to the skill of makers in her First Nations lineage.
"My work Matha [Yorta Yorta word for canoe] is an exploration of ceremony and the Aboriginal ways of being," Bonini says.
"For me, cultural identity is the foundation from where I make from, and as an Aboriginal woman who also has strong Italian heritage, there is a strong desire in me to explore diversity of culture, and the beautiful layers that find their way in my work. I get to learn about culture through both of my families," she says.
In the work Matha (canoe), Bonini is paying homage to her elders' canoe-making skills.
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Renowned Australian artist Maree Clarke unveils a new sculpture specifically made for the Biennial titled Waa (crow). Moulton says it's a work that shows Clarke — who has been making work since the 1990s — in a new light, delving into a sculptural direction not seen before until now.
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New-Zealand-born and Sydney-based artist Angela Tiatia has made a new three-channel video work that pays tribute to her Pacific ancestors. Drawn to the idea of regeneration, she focuses on an old Samoan chant that is losing its oral foothold in modern times, while weaving her concern for the environment and its landscape into her digital piece.
"This very formal and old language is still spoken by few individuals, but it's certainly losing its place within the Samoan culture," Tiatia says.
"It takes a lot of dedicated years of study under a master and, for me as a Samoan, I wanted to explore my connection to the language and its place in our history. Resurrecting the language keeps it a constant talking point," she says.
Tiatia's installation is both an audio experience and a visual one; a Samoan chant is part of the art work.
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Tiatia has the chant sung by an actor while imagery of the Pacific Island landscape and sacred sites and Pacific Island performers help tell the story.
The Biennial is also a chance to see new works by painter Gunybi Ganambarr, who exhibited for the first time in New York last October.
"It's already in there, in the eye, a vision, a dream, it's everything," Ganambarr told the ABC of his creative inspiration in 2021.
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Ganambarr is a Yolŋu man who lives and works at Gängän, near Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land. Moulton was in New York for the exhibition opening on 73rd Street, and says a work is on loan thanks to a private collector.
A beautiful, contemporary space
Given the Aboriginal mission Coranderrk was not far from the site of TarraWarra Museum, hosting We Are Eagles feels all the more pertinent to Moulton.
TarraWarra was founded by the late philanthropists Eva and Marc Besen, the art-loving couple who purchased the property in 1979 to initially use as a family retreat. Now it's become a cultural institution at the foothills of the Yarra Valley.
Photo shows
Next to a very large, brightly coloured mural painting, a woman with brown hair and wearing art smock, stands holds paintbrush.
A Victorian studio for artists with disabilities is celebrating five decades with its first survey.
A new cultural hub has just opened at the site too, where works collected by the couple are on permanent show for visitors to browse.
"The Coranderrk mission was so close," Moulton says. "The country out here is magical, from the rolling hills to the Birrarrung river that runs through, it has this special energy. So many First Nations people are connected to Coranderrk.
"TarraWarra is a beautiful architecturally designed building and an independent institution that doesn't have these long colonial histories tied to it," she says.
"It's a beautiful contemporary space and wonderful to think about it this way."
TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles runs until July 20 at TarraWarra Museum of Art (Healesville, Victoria).