Since its first festival in 2017, YIRRAMBOI – the Victoria-based, future-focused, First Nations organisation – has commissioned artists to create new work for its biennial event.
Tapping the spirit and culture of Koorie mob today, the festival aims to enliven Melbourne’s venues and public spaces. The next festival continues that trajectory with six new works announced today (18 July) that will premiere at the 2025 YIRRAMBOI festival.
In a statement, festival co-lead/creative-lead Sherene Stewart said the commissions were chosen for ‘their thought-provoking and genre-pushing concepts – across all art forms, including theatre, drag, live music, installation, visual art, film, cabaret and performance’.
Stewart continued: ‘Deeply rooted in purpose, YIRRAMBOI spans beyond the western term of “art”. We platform expressions of culture, identity, unity and truth, through evolutionary and experimental practices, breaking away from preconceived ideas of First Nations expression, which is embodied by the six new works we are thrilled to present in 2025.’
The commissions were selected by the YIRRAMBOI Advisory Group and leadership team, and each artist will receive $36,000 from the City of Melbourne and First Peoples, Creative Victoria – matching YIRRAMBOI’s increased investment in the 2023 program.
This is the fourth iteration of YIRRAMBOI.
Read: First Nations power list: 41 recent appointments making a difference
The six new YIRRAMBOI commissions
Possum drumming and dance as pedagogy (film and performance)
Documented on Country in Warburton Tea Tree Forest by the fresh Birrarung, Stacie Piper — (Wurundjeri/Dja Dja Wurrung/Ngurai Illum-Wurrung) profiles the making of possum skin drums, as well as the creation of a water dance through the knowledge transfer of Wurundjeri Elders, led by Aunty Vicky Nicholson-Brown. Piper is a Djirri Djirri Dancer, the current Chairperson of the Victorian NAIDOC Committee, the First Nations Curator at TarraWarra Museum of Art and Curator for Museums Victoria.
Lazarus (theatre)
Playwright, director, actor and founding member of ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, John Harding (Meriam/Kuku-Yulangi) honours Uncle Larry Walsh (Taungurung) – one of Victoria’s most important activists – through a theatre production created through time on Country and in-depth interviews with Victorian communities. A staunch and successful advocate for First Nations issues since the 1970s, Uncle Larry was one of the first field officers for the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, and his impact includes the formation of the first Stolen Generations organisations in Australia.
Holding Space (visual art and film)
Apryl Day (Yorta Yorta/Wemba Wemba/Barapa Barapa), founder of the Dhadjowa Foundation, and Founder of Kalinya Communications, Jirra Lulla Harvey (Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri) present a collaborative film and visual art exhibition exploring the grief and joy that First Nations people carry simultaneously. Day reflects on protest, truth telling and the resilience of the community and families who have lost loved ones in custody. While Harvey captures special moments from an intimate, on Country dinner – celebrating Elders, stories around the table and the connection between food, culture and Country. Together they create Holding Space.
Synergy (sound)
Wiradjuri electronic artist Naretha Williams and collaborator Cyrus 9ine (co-founders of the Groundstar Music record label) present a bold 80-minute live electronic body of work. Synergy combines music from Williams’ 2023 album Into Dusk We Fall and forthcoming new album with Cyrus 9ine Love Has Teeth (late 2024) with cutting-edge digital imagery, AV design and live vision mixing to form an all-encompassing live performance experience.
House Arrest (theatre)
Writer, director, collaborator and performer Alexis West (Birra Gubba/Wakka Wakka/South Sea Islander) presents an entertaining six-hander kitchen sink drama about a family dealing with identity, addiction and disconnection. As characters slip through portals into an alternative reality world of Deadly – a game of dreamtime reality of nightmarish proportions – players must find and confront their connection through loss.
Three Blak Ravers (drag/cabaret/theatre)
A surreal nightmare-fuelled horror cabaret and Blak-thriller follows three Blak rave-goers embarking on a journey to find “the rave” and forced to confront their fears. From multidisciplinary award-winning artist Caleb Thaiday (Meriam) – winner of the national Miss First Nation pageant in 2021 and the Supreme Queen pageant at Sydney WorldPride 2023 – the show combines projection, shadow puppetry and AV technology with an industrial and electronic rave-heavy soundscape for a multisensory performance.
International Collaborative Commissions
YIRRAMBOI is also incredibly proud to reintroduce its International Collaborative Commissions — inviting Australian First Nations and Canadian First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists to collaborate on new intercultural work to have world premieres at YIRRAMBOI 2025. Details will be announced later this year.
YIRRAMBOI returns to Naarm/Melbourne from 1-11 May 2025.
