THE VEIL, currently on view at Buxton Contemporary in Naarm/Melbourne, offers a profound and evocative exploration into the unseen layers of existence. Curated by Hannah Presley, with assistant curator Isabella Hone-Saunders, the exhibition assembles diverse practices—photography, film, weaving, fibre art, experimental printmaking, and kinetic sculpture—to navigate the territories of memory, identity, cultural resilience, and the spiritual realms that quietly shape our world.
Presley writes:
“There have always been places described as transitional, spooky, or strange spaces that hum with energy, where the air feels thin and the light is dappled. These uncanny or supernatural qualities are reflected in the exhibition, revealing a familiarity with the spirit world, which in some cases profoundly influences the artists’ everyday lives.”
At the heart of the exhibition is a major new film commission by Gunditjmara, Djabwurrung, and Nira-Bulok Taungurung artist Hayley Millar Baker, Eternity the Butterfly (2025), supported by Creative Australia and Creative Victoria. This work is shown alongside Millar Baker’s earlier films Nyctinasty (2021) and The Umbra (2023), marking the first time all three films are exhibited together—an atmospheric trilogy that folds temporal and spiritual dimensions into deeply personal storytelling.
Naarm-based artist Hannah Gartside contributes new and existing textile and sculptural works that stretch across a decade of practice. Her pieces hum with kinetic life, delicate yet charged, offering meditations on feminine histories and emotional traces.
In an Australian premiere, Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska presents fourteen haunting works from her acclaimed photographic series Mama, originally featured in The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. Grzeszykowska’s manipulated images interrogate motherhood, identity, and bodily transformation, resonating uncannily within the exhibition’s exploration of thresholds.
Lena Yarinkura, a senior Kune artist from Arnhem Land, expands her practice with new sculptural works. Her Gnarr (spiders) and two ambitious pieces telling the story of Wititj and the Two Sisters interweave ancestral narratives and local cosmologies with tactile immediacy.
The exhibition also debuts significant new acquisitions by the University of Melbourne: Lisa Waup reimagines her immersive installation holding Country, while master weaver Glenda Nicholls (Waddi Waddi, Ngarrindjeri, Yorta Yorta) presents The Reflection Net, both works shown at Buxton Contemporary for the first time.
THE VEIL does not simply stage artworks; it creates a space of porous boundaries where cultural memory, personal inheritance, and spiritual forces intersect. Each work acts like a portal, pulling viewers into encounters with the intangible—grief, belonging, unseen connections that ripple through Country and kin.
There is an insistence here on recognising the emotional residue embedded in materials and processes. From the quiet pulse of woven threads to the spectral flicker of film, the exhibition suggests that to engage with art is also to stand at the threshold of something larger, older, and insistently alive.
THE VEIL is on view until 1 November 2025. Entry is free.
Exhibition Details:
Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 5pm
Buxton Contemporary, Corner Southbank Boulevard & Dodds Street, Southbank
University of Melbourne
More at buxtoncontemporary.com
