Continuing to provide a vital platform for Victorian-based First Nations artists, YIRRAMBOI has revealed the successful recipients of their 2025 Commissions program – supporting the creative development and premiere presentation of six new works at YIRRAMBOI's 2025 festival.
Displaying rich and diverse expressions of First Nations art today, the successful recipients for YIRRAMBOI’s 2025 Commissions program were chosen due to their thought-provoking and genre-pushing concepts – across all art forms, including theatre, drag, live music, installation, visual art, film, cabaret, and performance.
YIRRAMBOI 2025
- 1-11 May 2025
- Melbourne’s CBD
- yirramboi.com.au
Explore Melbourne’s latest arts and stage news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
YIRRAMBOI’s 2025 commissions
The YIRRAMBOI advisory group and leadership team have selected six new works, which was expanded from five due to the strength of applications. Successful artists each receive $36,000 from the City of Melbourne and First Peoples, Creative Victoria – matching YIRRAMBOI’s increased investment in the 2023 program.
“Deeply rooted in purpose, YIRRAMBOI spans beyond the western term of ‘art’,” says festival co-lead/creative-lead Sherene Stewart. “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.”
“YIRRAMBOI provides a stage for First Nations voices to be heard, for stories to reverberate through generations, to drive change and create a future where First Peoples are rightly celebrated.
“As a critically acclaimed international arts festival, YIRRAMBOI possesses the power to lead the arts industry into a new tomorrow.”
YIRRAMBOI’s six new works
Possum Drumming and Dance as Pedagogy (Film + Performance)
Documented on Country in Warburton Tea Tree Forest by the fresh Birrarung, Stacie Piper — (Wurundjeri/Dja Dja Wurrung/Nguirai 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 + Film)
Apryl Day (Yorta Yorta/Wemba Wemba/Barapa Barapa), founder of the Dhadjowa foundation, and Founder of Kalinya 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. 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 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 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 alternate 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 World Pride 2023 – who combines projection, shadow puppetry, AV technology with an industrial and electronic rave-heavy soundscape for a multi-sensory performance.
International Collaborative Commissions
For the fourth iteration, YIRRAMBOI Commissions again invited First Nations creatives, collectives, community groups, and arts organisations based in Victoria to submit an expression of interest – encouraging applications from Victorian First Peoples, d/Deaf, Disabled, and neurodiverse artists, and regionally based creatives.
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 world premiere at YIRRAMBOI 2025 – to be announced later this year.
‘Tomorrow’ in the local languages of the Boonwurrung and Woi-wurrung peoples of Eastern Kulin Nations, YIRRAMBOI is Melbourne’s leading First Nations arts festival – showcasing First Nations art and artists to local, national, and international audiences – giving stories of ‘now’ back to the lands that have held them for over 80,000 years.
YIRRAMBOI returns to Naarm/Melbourne from 1-11 May 2025.
For more information on YIRRAMBOI, visit yirramboi.com.au
