La Trobe Art Institute 2026 Program Announcement

We are thrilled to share our upcoming exhibitions

In February we open the iterative exhibition All That is Alive, collectively curated by Connie Anthes, Stella Rosa McDonald (UTS Gallery & Art Collection), Jacqui Shelton, and Amelia Wallin (La Trobe Art Institute). Featuring ten new commissions from Australian artists and collectives, the exhibition explores aliveness through themes of collectivity, kinship, and survival. Reimagining the university museum not as a static archive but as a living, breathing entity, All That is Alive positions the museum as an active agent in the reproduction of life.

In May, we welcome guest curator Maya Hodge to present My Blood Sings Old Songs. This group exhibition features loans and new commissions by artists working in photography and moving image to trace the imprint of memory as it lingers in the body and the image. Threading together performance, gesture, and staging, the exhibition honours the echoes of ceremony and legacy—knowing that each story we carry lives most fully in our bloodlines.

Later in the year, guest curator Sharmila Wood joins La Trobe Art Institute senior curator Amelia Wallin to co-curate Actions for Water. Intertwining artistic practice with ecological advocacy, the exhibition brings together international perspectives on water sovereignty to reimagine our relationship with water as sacred, political, and essential to life.

We close the year with Beyond the Horizon Beyond the Sea. This group exhibition takes Leonard French’s renowned monumental coloured-glass works as a point of departure, refracting themes of mythology, cinema, and identity. Co-curated by La Trobe Art Institute director, Karen Annett, and curator, Jacqui Shelton, the exhibition offers a rich meditation on the transformative potential of light through First Nations, queered, diasporic, regional and marginalised approaches to spirituality and cultural practice.

Alongside our exhibition program, we continue to activate our façade and reflect our context via our major biannual commissions. Raf McDonald will open the year with their new major work reflecting on Bendigo’s history of unionism and themes of displacement. Following this will be La Trobe Art Institute’s first façade commission by Dja Dja Wurrung artists, with more details to be shared soon.

Finally, we are excited to launch our third acquisitive Sandhurst Commission. In 2026, we are working with Moorina Bonini, a proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta Dhulunyagen family clan of Ulupna and the Yorta Yorta, Wurundjeri and Wiradjuri Briggs/McCrae family. As an artist of Aboriginal and Italian heritage, her practice critiques and disrupts the Eurocentric frameworks that shape institutional perceptions of Indigenous identity.

All That is Alive

ATIA-identity

25 February to 10 May 2026

Curated by Connie Anthes, Stella Rosa McDonald, Jacqui Shelton, Amelia Wallin
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

All That is Alive is a co-commission by UTS Gallery & Art Collection and La Trobe Art Institute.

My Blood Sings Old Songs

Leyla Stevens, Kidung still, 2019

20 May to 9 August 2026

Curated by Maya Hodge
Artists: Atong Atem, Sonja Hodge, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis, Leyla Stevens, wani toaishara with more to be announced

Actions for Water

Eugenia Lim, PIPES (2025), Installation view at Blacktown Arts Centre. Photo: Zan Wimberley

20 August to 8 November 2026

Curated by Sharmila Wood and Amelia Wallin
Artists: underFOOT Collective, Tomoko Hayashi, Eugenia Lim, Mei Swan Lim, Daniel Jan Martin, Zarina Muhammad, Khvay Samnang, Sao Sreymao, Urbonas Studio with more to be announced

Actions for water is curated for La Trobe Art Institute by Sharmila Wood and Amelia Wallin. Founding Partner: Tin Sheds Gallery, University of Sydney.

Beyond the Horizon Beyond the Sea

Mel Deerson, still from The Dream of the Open Window, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

19 November 2026 to 21 February 2027

Curated by Karen Annett and Jacqui Shelton
Artists: Mel Deerson, Leonard French, Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello, Michael Riley with more to be announced

Biannual Façade Commissions

Raf McDonald development image

Cars and other gifts from the sun
29 January to 26 July 2026
Raf McDonald

30 July 2026 to 31 January 2027
Dja Dja Wurrung façade commission to be announced

Images:

1. Program announcement design by Dennis Gruel

2. Tully Arnot and Chris Luscri, still from Silicon, 2024. Courtesy of the artists.

3. Leyla Stevens, still from Kidung, 2019, three channel film, stereo sound, 10:58mins.

4. Eugenia Lim, PIPES, 2025, Installation view at Blacktown Arts Centre. Photo: Zan Wimberley

5. Mel Deerson, still from The Dream of the Open Window, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

6. Raf McDonald, Cars and other gifts from the sun in development. Photo: Jacqui Shelton

Tile image: Leyla Stevens, still from Kidung (2019), three channel film, stereo sound, 10:58mins.