Melbourne art exhibitions you won’t want to miss in 2025

From exhibitions exploring 65,000 years of culture, to acts of love and journeys into the spirit world, these are the art shows you can’t miss in 2025.

65,000 YEARS: A SHORT HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN ART

After a few years of closure, the Potter Museum of Art is reopening with an urgent, vast exhibition: an examination of the rise of Indigenous art in Australia. With the pointed title 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, the exhibition curated by an inimitable trio, Marcia Langton, AO, Judith Ryan, AM, and Shanysa McConville, alongside consultation with Indigenous custodians. Spanning more than 400 artworks, the show will convey the significance of Indigenous designs, cultural traditions, agency and knowledge — plus seven new commissions by leading First Nations artists. There’s a magnificent exhibition book that’s already out, pre-empting how the physical show will bear witness to 65,000 years of continuing culture.

Potter Museum of Art, May 30 – November 23

FRIDA KAHLO: IN HER OWN IMAGE

Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits are among the most recognisable 20th-century paintings. Yet, it’s rare to see the Mexican artist’s works because many are in private collections or cannot leave Mexico — which makes a Bendigo showing even more enticing. While Kahlo painted works on womanhood, cultural resilience, intimacy and disability (she struggled with chronic pain from polio and a bus accident), this show considers Kahlo’s art through her personal belongings and the vivid adornments she wore in life and paintings. The exhibition will feature Kahlo’s clothes, make-up, accessories and medical corsets — many sealed in a bathroom for 50 years — alongside photographs, plus one of her most celebrated paintings, Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.
Bendigo Art Gallery, March 15 – July 13

LINDY LEE

No one creates art about the nature of being like Lindy Lee. This show marks Lee’s first Melbourne exhibition since she unveiled her landmark, walk-through sculpture, Ouroboros, at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) a few months ago. The most NGA has ever paid for a work ($14 million), it’s the pinnacle of her 50-year practice exploring her Chinese ancestry through Taoism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism. In connecting materials with meaning, Lee will exhibit alongside two emerging artists, Jingwei Bu and Angie Pai. All Chinese-Australians, the artists share a deep cultural bond, using materials to reflect existence. While Lee works with wood, metal and fire, Bu’s tea-stained pieces capture the residue of traditional ceremonies, and Pai reimagines traditional Chinese garments.
Sullivan+Strumpf, May 15 – June 14

JUDY WATSON

With powerful paintings, drawings and sculptures, all connected to the land and traditions of the Waanyi culture, Judy Watson was recently the subject of a truly moving survey at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. Her work is equally ethereal and politically potent, often connecting to her matrilineal history. She’ll be showing in Melbourne with a new solo exhibition following a residency in Taiwan, art engagements in Japan and Norway, and travels in France. In Taiwan, outside the nearest city of Taichung, Watson has been working on new pieces with artist Yuma Taru, an Atayal Aboriginal artist. Indeed, connecting with others and sharing knowledge is inherent to Watson’s practice.
Tolarno Galleries, November 15 -December 13

FIVE ACTS OF LOVE

In this show, love will extend beyond romance to encompass five acts: resistance, revolution, intimacy, memory and annihilation. The exhibition is also about familial love, friendship and spiritual love — and how love is a way of communicating about internal and external worlds. Some artists will also posit love as a binding force between resistance movements across the world. It’s refreshing to have a show about love when the emotion doesn’t abound as subject matter that much in contemporary art – even though art itself could be constituted as an act of love. So far, the confirmed artists are Hoda Afshar, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, D Harding, Khaled Sabsabi, Larissa Sansour and Hossein Valamanesh.
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, June 28 -August 24

PAST IS PROLOGUE: FOUR DECADES OF GERTRUDE

Gertrude Contemporary, an icon synonymous with contemporary art in Melbourne, is celebrating its 40th anniversary with four interrelated exhibitions that each tell the story of a distinct era in Gertrude’s history. The series has four groups of curators, and starts with the founding community of Gertrude’s first decade, 1985 to 1995. The second decade focuses on three artists, Mutlu Çerkez, Damiano Bertoli and Masato Takasaka. The years 2005 to 2015 will be about discourse and legacy, while the final 10 years will centre on structural critiques of the art world. Gertrude’s renowned studio program has supported countless artists, and in many ways the four shows will be a recent history of contemporary art in Melbourne.
Gertrude Contemporary, February 8 – October 14

TARRAWARRA BIENNIAL 2025: WE ARE EAGLES

The TarraWarra Biennial is being put together by one of the best curators right now, Yorta Yorta woman Kimberley Moulton. Themed under the title We Are Eagles, this year’s biennial will feature new works by 22 artists, centring cultural connections to the land, sky, stars, objects and memory. It spans ancestral knowledge to visions of the future. Taking a First Peoples curatorial approach, the show is about resisting colonialism — as captured in the show title. We Are Eagles is taken from a speech given in 1983 about the colonisation of Australia, where Yorta Yorta activist and pastor Sir Doug Nicholls advocated for equal rights, stating that “we do not want chickenfeed … we are not chickens; we are eagles”.
TarraWarra Museum of Art, March 29 – July 20

THE VEIL

Ever since the 2019 Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York, the spirit world has surged in contemporary art. And it’s a good thing – for too long such a key part of many artists’ practices has been overlooked. Buxton Contemporary’s take on the spirit world is through the idea of the veil, looking at how otherworldly experiences, often invisible or concealed, are central to existence. With works spanning photography, film, weaving, fibre craft, printmaking and kinetic sculpture, the show has a terrific array of artists including Hayley Millar Baker, Hannah Gartside, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Glenda Nicholls, Lisa Waup and Lena Yarinkura.

Buxton Contemporary, June 20 – November 2

BLAK IN-JUSTICE: INCARCERATION AND RESILIENCE

Heide Museum of Art and The Torch — an organisation that supports the art and culture of First Nations people who have been incarcerated — are pairing together to call out the urgent issue of Indigenous incarceration in Australia. Curated by Kent Morris, Barkindji artist and creative director of The Torch, the show will have works by First Nations artists including Vernon Ah Kee, Gordon Bennett, Destiny Deacon and Judy Watson. The artists will address the disproportionate representation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system and the crisis of deaths in custody. Also showing are the works of former and current prison inmates, many who have connected with their culture through The Torch, including Thelma Beeton, Stacey Edwards, Robby Wirramanda and Sean Miller.
Heide Museum of Modern Art, April 5—July 20

AWAKENING HISTORIES

Centuries before British settlement — and earlier than the Dutch and the French — First Nations people from Australia were connecting with Makassan traders from South-East Asia. Developed by curators and researchers from Australia and Indonesia, along with Monash University’s project Global Encounters & First Nations Peoples: 1000 Years of Australian History, this exhibition tells the story between First Nations people and Makassan traders. Focusing on trade routes, the significance of the sea, as well as interconnection and kinship, the exhibition will challenge Eurocentric narratives of Australian settlement. Confirmed artists include Zaenal Beta, Abdi Karya, Jenna Lee, Bulthirrirri Wunuŋmurra and Dhopiya Yunupinyu.
Monash University Museum of Art, October 4 – December 6

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