https://beechworthbiennale.com.au/

Beechworth Biennale, Beechworth (2026)

30/05/2026

Review: From the Buses: 2026
Beechworth Biennale by John Kirkman.
Issue 75 ARTIST PROFILE. The Australasian Art Magazine.
John writes...
Apparently there are over three hundred biennales across the globe. Good for business, they're considered important symbols of national pride, proof of cultural maturity and drivers of economic dividend. Smaller than most, the Beechworth Biennale is on the list!

Thank you John Kirkman and Artist Profile

23/04/2026

PITCHED- tent, solar lights, wood, single channel video projection, no sound, duration 4.19 min. Artist PENNY COSS. 2026 BEECHWORTH BIENNALE installed at SITE 3, Provenance Restaurant Ford Street Beechworth.
A dome tent is pitched in an unlikely place. It recalls the makeshift camps which amassed in 1852 when gold was discovered in Beechworth. The inaccessible location of this tent evokes the unreachable heights of hope and ambition that drove small-scale miners and prospectors, many of whom ended in bankruptcy, crippling debt, and destitution.
The building the tent stands on a popular hatted restaurant, a former Bank that turned extracted gold into capital. Inside the tent a video was projected onto the walls, visible at night. Played on loop it begins with a moon of rock as seen through the viewfinder of a microscope and then folds into vibrant faceted colours of other minerals recorded with a geological petrographic microscope. This follows documentation of glistening mineral sands falling like gold dust. Lastly, the video pans out to a portrait of the artist as a geologist's daughter, inspecting rock samples drawn from a sample bag in her father's archives.
A white moon is suspended on a stick outside the tent. Not quite full and not quite new this point of the moon cycle some consider an auspicious time for reflection and forgiveness. This is also the predicted moon phase for this year's Biennale.
Possibly one of the more difficult exhibition sites, we thank Penny Coss for accepting the challenge and bringing the work PITCHED to the event this year!

📸 Ale Munoz

08/04/2026

Eminent artist MIKE PARR exhibited his 2023 work BORDERLINE [The Going Home performance], as a projection at SITE 18: The Birches Building, May Day Hills former mental asylum.

The 4.5hr documentation of the blind durational performance GOING HOME was projected in its entirety directly onto the façade of the 3-storey administrative building of the old mental asylum as part of the 2026 BEECHWORTH BIENNALE.
The now famous work by Mike Parr, signaled a momentous moment in the artist career when it was first performed live. The opportunity for Mike to speak publicly to this time preceded the Saturday night screening, along with the first public reading of his incredible poem Nail your Hand to a Tree.

Biennale’s Nina Machielse Hunt said of Mike Parrs contribution... Words that are measured, considered, painful and honest. Words that are gently spoken and words that are projected 3 stories high. The audience who gathered for this art event held within a small town tucked safely in north east Victoria Australia, grappled with the profound impact that words uttered or written can have. The means and methods of delivery no doubt has a profound impact on interpretation and original intention. But how should one make sense of inexplicable personal and world events if not for the Arts?

Thank you Mike Parr for a moving profound and challenging offering.

04/04/2026

Forged from gold auto-painted steel, as both artifact and provocation artist FREDERICK BEEL exhibited the sculptural work titled WR-442 for the 2026 Beechworth Biennale.
SITE 15: McConville Avenue, Lake Sambell, Beechworth.

The art works shape and form is an abstraction of the historic water race numbered 442, discovered on mining maps. This unique homage could be interpreted as challenging the expected narratives of heritage, mining, and migration that so often anchor us in nostalgia. Instead, this work invites us to interrogate as the artist says....the flow of legacy: How do we inherit the consequences of engineered landscapes? Can we locate ourselves in the convergence of industrial ambition and natural resource, or are we destined to drift, unmoored, in the currents of our predecessors' decisions?

WR-442 could be considered a radical reimagining of family, place, and the myth of progress. Francis Beel was the artists great grandfather and his brother William Beel, both labourers on John Pund's gold mine, are not just ancestors-they are catalysts, rooted at the base of a family tree irrigated by the relentless pursuit of prosperity.
With WR-442, ancestry and aspiration collide, calling the modern viewer to examine what it means to inherit, to build, and to belong.

Research in the making of this work has both private and public significance. Thank you Fred for creating this fascinating floating site specific artwork and for being an integral component in this year's event.

01/04/2026

The two historic holding cells which once held persons prior to Court or Gaol became a dynamic exhibition site for artist Dr DREW PETTIFER for the 2026 Beechworth Biennale.
SITE 5 - INCIDENTAL CONTACT- three channel video with audio. Holding Cells, Police Paddocks Beechworth Historic Precinct.

The term 'incidental contact' is used in many team sports to refer to physical contact that doesn't hinder a player's ability to continue competing and is therefore not penalised as an infringement. Drew Pettifer's three-channel video artwork, INCIDENTAL CONTACT, uses the lens of male contact sports to explore masculinity, queerness, and intimacy. The installation presents three slow motion scenes that unfold across the two Holding Cells. In one cell we see two men engaged in a series of Australian Rules football tackles; in the other a boxing face-off and an assisted hamstring stretch. Each sequence examines the interplay between aggression, intimacy, vulnerability, and touch, highlighting the complex choreography of male bodies and the emotional charge present in moments of proximity and restraint. These same themes that appear in competitive contact sports also play out in penal contexts, where cellmates share confined spaces.
Through these explorations, the work challenges conventional ideas of masculinity while foregrounding the body as both an arena and a site of connection.

The audience was invited to enter the small spaces surrounded by austere granite walls and very little light. The video works were in vibrant colour contrast to its surroundings. With time slowly the action morphed giving the male models presence. Reinforced by the intimate proximity of the screens with the audience, a clever and contemplative creative experience is generated. One that allowed new or other perspectives to be considered and appreciated. Thank you Drew for creating Incidental Contact, a truly immersive and important artwork.

Regional Arts Victoria
Creative Australia
Explore Beechworth

27/03/2026

LOCUST JONES presented
THE NEWS ROOM, at SITE 2 the front space at the Beechworth Contemporary Art Space on Ford Street.

This artwork continued to evolve during the day and was viewed at night through the windows. The artist conducted live drawing performances at the site over the 3 day event. These performances were scheduled for an hour but most days lasted at least 5 hours.

The audience was free to move into the site and be enveloped by the sounds and chaos of a working studio. Coffee cups, drawing materials. Current news reporting blared out of TV, radio and newsprint which was positioned throughout the site. A constant static noise was also present marking the continuum of time which was interrupted by classic punk/rock tunes.
Locust said...
Hostile takeovers and vassal states.
24-hour news cycles and horrifying spectacles. Everyday atrocities. Bias, misinformation, politicised narratives, and the weaponisation of truth drive the work. News media operates as an accelerant within my drawing practice. I draw in response to multiple inputs: radio broadcasts, video, live news feeds, sound, and, at times, music or percussion. These inputs determine imagery, rhythm, and resistance, shaping the pace, pressure, and density of the drawing. For this Beechworth Biennale performance, developed over three days, I will work with ink on paper in response to live radio transmission within the space. The broadcast functions as a real-time condition rather than a subject, driving duration, repetition, and accumulation as events unfold.
It is, in the end, quite simple.

Thank you Locust for being a dynamic additional to the 2026 Beechworth Biennale. Your honest passion and creative energy was palpable and deeply moving.

Photos 📸 by Ale Munoz.

25/03/2026

ARISE by DREZ
SITE 10: Ovens Hospital Facade, Church Street Beechworth. This project engaged the remaining facade of Beechworth's former Ovens District Hospital as both an architectural surface and a site full of history. The installation occupied the building's empty windows and thresholds, treating these openings not simply as absences, but as spaces that hold traces of memory.
Handpainted mesh planes transform the building's openings into a shifting colour gradient that moves across the facade. The material is permeable and semi-transparent, allowing light and air to pass through, emphasising openness and breath. Colour acts as an atmospheric presence, subtly reshaping how the space is felt and experienced.
'Arise' approaches vacancy as something active rather than lacking. By filling architectural voids with colour and translucency, 'Arise' reframes the void as an atmospheric field that shifts how the space is seen and felt. These interventions introduce a quiet sense of rhythm into the long-dormant structure, suggesting movement within a site historically defined by stillness. The facade shifts from relic to living surface, changing with light and weather. Moving between memory and renewal, the installation avoids restoration or reconstruction. Instead, it offers a temporary reactivation that emphasises atmosphere, sensation, and embodied experience. 'Arise' asks how contemporary gestures can reawaken historic architecture, not by returning it to its former use, but by creating new forms of presence in the present. - DREZ 2026.

This work perfectly captured the true spirit of the Beechworth Biennale. The artist works respectfully with the physicality of the site and reflects on not only the history but imagines new possibilities. The artwork invites the audience to experience the familiar in new ways, uncover various possibilities, interpretations and generously suggests the real potential of a future filled with endless possibilities.
Thank you DREZ for conceiving fabricating and installing ARISE for the 2026 event. - Nina Machielse Hunt Creative Director.

Photos courtesy of the artist, Amber Dee and Ale Munoz.

20/03/2026

Congratulations to KELLY BICK!

Kelly was randomly selected as the winner of the GLENNYS BRIGGS original artwork. Kelly provided FEEDBACK to our team about the event and went in a draw to win the fabulous prize.

THANK YOU to all the peeps who provided the answers to a few simple questions about the 2026 BEECHWORTH BIENNALE. We greatly appreciate your support and hope to welcome you back to our next event in 2028!

12/03/2026

The second Beechworth Biennale was held over three full days 7 8 9 March, and really it was for everyone!

The entire Biennale program was designed to be as accessible as possible, with free entry to the public art exhibition, consisting of 20 installations at unique exhibition sites throughout the town.

Thank you to all the wonderful artists and visitors for coming to Beechworth. We miss you already!

10/03/2026

PEOPLES CHOICE AWARD!
Whilst the Beechworth Biennale is definitely not a competition, our team would LOVE SOME FEEDBACK from its audience....
So heres some SERIOUS INCENTIVE!

Jump onto the website www.beechworthbiennale.com.au and select your fav/s, tell us a few things and be in the running to WIN this artwork by Taungwurrung-Yorta Yorta woman GLENNYS BRIGGS. Glennys was an exhibitor in the 2024 Beechworth Biennale, she was on the selection panel for the Beechworth Contemporary Art Prize and regularly exhibits with Beechworth Contemporary Art Space.

Glennys says....Each person born of Aboriginal blood has a firm connection with the country of their blood line through the kinship system. We are the Caretaker/Custodians of that country and the onus is on each generation to develop ways to fulfill the responsibilities of that role.

Win CLOAKED IN SECRET by Glennys Briggs.
2026 BEECHWORTH BIENNALE.

Beechworth Biennale

30/05/2026

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08/04/2026

04/04/2026

01/04/2026

27/03/2026

25/03/2026

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