PERTH.- The Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) today unveils its extraordinary 2025 artistic program – presenting over 200 of the most exciting contemporary artists working today in a series of major new commissions, pillar annual showcases, provocative performances, and growing international studio program.

PICA is at the vanguard of producing and presenting contemporary arts in Western Australia. Its 2025 program highlights the organisation’s unwavering commitment to nurturing emerging artistic talent, diverse voices and new ideas, and creating challenging art experiences than engage contemporary audiences looking for authentic experiences.

PICA 2025 program highlights include:

• Presenting 200+ of the most exciting contemporary artists working today
• New home of pre-eminent Revealed: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists exhibition
• Return of PICA’s flagship exhibition Hatched: National Graduate Show
• Five major new commissions (totalling $230,000)
• PICA’s opening Bunuru Season program, as part of Perth Festival.
• 65 artists practicing on-site through PICA’s studio residency program.
• Supporting WA artists through their International Exchange Program with travel France, India, Taiwan and Indonesia.

‘Our 2025 program is a celebration of connection – between people, place and culture,’ says PICA’s Director/CEO Hannah Mathews. With Revealed now taking a prominent place at PICA, and our Bunuru program exploring powerful themes of matrilineal legacy and intergenerational storytelling, we’re thrilled to provide opportunities to amplify voices that shape and challenge how we understand the world. This year is about bold ideas, artistic innovation and fostering deeper engagement with the communities we serve.’

In 2025, for its 18th year, the monumental state-wide annual showcase Revealed: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists will envelope Perth’s Cultural Centre, rehoming the pre-eminent exhibition within PICA’s central gallery for the very first time.

Presented in partnership with the Aboriginal Art Centre Hub Western Australia (AACHWA), Revealed brings new and emerging artists together to showcase the state’s rich diversity of Aboriginal cultures and their profound connection to country and culture across all art forms. Revealed is Western Australia’s most expansive survey of Aboriginal art and largest opportunity for artists to present and sell their works, with sales directly supporting Aboriginal artists and their communities.

‘AACHWA’s approach to Revealed reflects our unwavering commitment to art creation, cultural strength, best practice and the wellbeing of Aboriginal artists,’ says Chad Creighton, CEO AACHWA. ‘The new partnership with PICA – along with the WA Museum Boola Bardip, and the move to the City of Perth – are all part of our vision to bring in new and greater audiences and increase public engagement with the Aboriginal arts sector.’

Spanning four seasons that are distinctly thematic and deeply rooted in purpose, PICA’s 2025 program is particularly significant to place, heritage and culture. Encouraging both audiences and artists to expand their horizons, PICA facilitates cross-cultural connections and learning opportunities, while nurturing sustainable pathways for WA artists.

PICA’S 2025 Artistic Program

Season 1: Bunuru
7 February - 30 March 2025

PICA’s opening program for 2025 sees a powerful display of heritage, activism, and connection, with works exploring sense of place, maternal lineage, and intergenerational sharing of knowledge. Presented in association with Perth Festival and ACCA, and curated by Annika Kristensen, Oui Move In You is a major solo exhibition by Turner Award-winning, French artist Laure Prouvost (France) – one of the most celebrated artists on the contemporary international art circuit today.

Inspired by the radical figures who came before her, Oui Move In You conceptually explores the roles and legacies of grandmothers, the maternal spaces of mother and child, and ideas of intergenerational relationships and change. The exhibition takes audiences on a journey of evolution and transformation, from the watery space of the womb, through the earthly realm of childhood towards a climactic celestial release.

In the West End Gallery, part of the Perth Festival program, In Her Footsteps: A Tribute to Matrilineal Legacy brings together seven emerging artists from across Australia, who pay homage to the women that have shaped their lives, celebrating and acknowledging the vital, transformative, and nurturing pathways these matriarchs have forged.

Curated by PICA’s Director Hannah Mathews, the exhibition features new work from Whadjuk, Ballardong and Wilman Noongar artist Zali Morgan (WA), Lauren Burrow (NT), Sarah Elson’s (WA), Tom Freeman (WA), Darcey Bella Arnold (VIC), and Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal artists D Harding (NSW) and Kate Harding (QLD).

Also premiering as part of Perth Festival, Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon is the latest moving image work from Australian-Filipina transdisciplinary artist, Bhenji Ra (NSW). Featuring an original score by Tati au Miel, the film documents the transfer of ancestral, intergenerational knowledge between Ra and her teacher and collaborator, Sitti Airia Sangkula Askalani Obeso. A Tausūg elder, Obeso is a cultural bearer of the pangalay, a pre-Islamic traditional dance of the Tausūg and Bajau people from the Sulu archipelago and Sabah in the Philippines.

For PICA’s third Judy Wheeler Commission and annual site-specific series, Badimia and Yued Noongar artist Amanda Bell (WA) addresses the Gallery’s history with new work Five ways to make a rainbow, acknowledging its construction on unceded land. Channelling and directing the sun’s light through the windows of PICA’s stairwell, Bell uses light, sound and language to create a captivating yet unsettling atmosphere, urging visitors to engage with their surroundings and reflect on the layered histories of the spaces we inhabit.

Cement Frogs the Ghost of a Swamp by Wardandi Noongar and Ait Koedhal artist and designer Tyrown Waigana (WA) is the second in PICA’s annual series supporting First Nations placemaking in the Perth Cultural Centre through the commissioning of mural paintings for the gallery’s public entrance.

Grounding PICA in its location on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja, the new mural reflects on the incremental disappearance of wetlands that were once a prominent feature of the now city – celebrating swamps as abundant places, vital for supporting a range of wildlife such as the Kyooya (Motorbike Frog), which is ecologically and spiritually significant to the traditional owners.

Remaining committed to nurturing sustainable pathways for emerging artists, in 2025, PICA hosts 65 artists-in-residences in their on-site studios, while also supporting the international exchange of seven artists-in-residences across France, India, Taiwan and Indonesia and Perth.

Commencing PICA’s 2025 International Exchange Program, celebrated artist Thu Van Tran (FR) explores fire and rebirth through ceramics, bronze and locally sourced earth; while artist and archaeologist Ho Yen Yen (TW), explores shared histories between Taiwan, Southeast Asia and Australia. With the opportunity to create in Taipei, Emma Buswell (WA) delves into the complex histories of labour and class politics using a 1960s knitting machine.

Season 2: Djeran-Makuru
12 April -15 June 2025

Alongside Revealed’s inaugural presentation at the gallery, Vernon Ah Kee’s (QLD) new film work GUDIRR GUDIRR considers the legacy of Australia’s history for Aboriginal people in northwest Australia today, and asks: what does it take to decolonise Aboriginal peoples’ minds, unlock doors and face cultural change? Directed and filmed on location in Rubibi (Broome), the striking three-screen video and sound installation re-imagines the original dance performance created by Marrugeku, performed by Co-Artistic Director Dalisa Pigram (WA).

PICA again partners with STRUT Dance (WA) for the second iteration of Restore – a dynamic double bill of new and recent dance works highlighting innovation and cross-regional collaboration – featuring a new choreographic commission from a Boorloo (Perth)-based dance artist and the West Australian premiere of an existing work from the Asia-Pacific.

While pvi collective’s Momentum is a new artistic initiative that sees WA-based mid-career artists come together to focus on experimentation within their practice, helping to discover the possibilities of an existing work while supporting one another in a collective effort.

Continuing PICA’s International Exchange Program, Sherry Quiambao (WA) will develop her project Horizon: Habitat in Makassar, drawing on her Filipino/Australian heritage and using water as a metaphor for the fluidity of cultural identity and migration.

Season 3: Djilba
2 August - 5 October 2025

Celebrating its 34th year, PICA’s landmark annual exhibition, Hatched: National Graduate Show highlights the diversity and creativity of some of the country’s most promising new artists. Showcasing recent graduates from schools across Australia, Hatched is the only exhibition of its kind in Australia, providing a vital platform for early career artists – with notable alumns including Archie Moore, Julie Gough and Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran.

For the 16th year, PICA partners with The University of Western Australia to present the Schenberg Art Awards, the largest prize pool with a total of $50,000 for emerging artists in the country, made possible by funds bequeathed by Dr. Harold Schenberg to The University of Western Australia.

Former architect and international art star, Delhi-based Asim Waqif (IND) joins PICA’s International Exchange Program to expand his practice in contemporary urban-design the politics of public space in the lead up to IOTA2027.

Season 4: Kambarang-Birak
17 October – 21 December 2025

Marking the fourth in a series of annual commissions – $80,000 funded by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund – A Deceptively Simple Need is a major new solo exhibition from Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Alana Hunt (NSW). Drawing on her experiences living in Kununurra, Hunt’s work examines how everyday activities are intricately linked to historical injustices and colonisation, while examining notions of private home ownership and its relationship to (Great Australian) dreams of development within our settler colonial context.

Second Generation Collective’s (WA) major new commission was made possible by $100,000 funding from Creative Australia’s Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy (VACS) Major Commissioning Projects Fund. Vádye Eshgh (Valley of Love) draws attention to narratives and experiences of Iranian-Australians and issues of collective trauma, remembering, love and loss – developed in conjunction with creative advisor, WA artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah.

In his latest video, SETTLED – developed by pro-Indigenous grassroots software company mob.io – Wiradjuri artist Joel Sherwood Spring (NSW) critically addresses the increasingly pervasive effects of new technologies on our human experience of the world and the ongoing capitalist extraction of Aboriginal culture.