2025 Tarnanthi Festival launches with First Nations hip hop supergroup 3% and the Tarnanthi Art Fair
2025 Tarnanthi Festival: The ARIA Award-winning First Nations hip hop collective 3% will stage a free performance at the Art Gallery of South Australia for the launch of the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival. Tarnanthi, AGSA’s festival of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, marks its tenth anniversary in 2025 with the major exhibition Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi, as part of its state-wide festival of thirty exhibitions and events across 24 partner venues, and an in-person Tarnanthi Art Fair at Union House at Adelaide University.
The open-air launch, free and open to the public, will take place at 6pm on Thursday 16 October on AGSA’s North Terrace forecourt, and includes a Kaurna Welcome to Country, a keynote address from Professor Megan Davis AC, the Whitlam Fraser Chair at Harvard University and constitutional law expert, and a live performance from First Nations supergroup 3%. Featuring Angus Field, Corey Webster aka Nooky and Dallas Woods, 3% references the percentage of Australia’s population that are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. The group are known for their powerful live performances that are steeped in the culture and stories of First Nations people, while pushing the boundaries of hip hop, pop and storytelling.
This year’s festival will include a major exhibition at AGSA titled Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi. Too Deadly assembles more than 200 landmark works of art that have been acquired into AGSA’s collection over ten years of Tarnanthi. Curated by Artistic Director Nici Cumpston OAM, Too Deadly reflects on Tarnanthi’s first decade, recontextualising important works, allowing new dialogues to emerge between works of art and showcasing the artistic excellence of First Nations artists from across the country.
The Tarnanthi Festival also stretches statewide with dozens of exhibitions and events at partner venues across Adelaide and around South Australia. Included in this year’s partner program is the world premiere
of The Colleano Heart on 19 October as part of the Adelaide Film Festival. Directed by Pauline Clague, this new film explores a circus family’s hidden legacy as descendants reunite across continents, uncovering their Aboriginal ancestry, global stardom and the extraordinary secrets they kept in order to survive. At The Odeon, Norwood, Australian Dance Theatre in association with Kurinji will present Two Blood, a thrilling blend of film, music and movement in which a Tagalaka woman and Cantonese man embark on a forbidden love affair. From Port Augusta to Lobethal, Belair to the Barossa, the partner program traverses exhibitions, film, dance, and more and is now available to explore at agsa.sa.gov.au/Tarnanthi.
In 2025, the much-anticipated Tarnanthi Art Fair returns as an in-person event on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 October, with more than 30 art centres from across Australia and thousands of works from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists for sale. Presented at a new venue, Union House at Adelaide University, the Tarnanthi Art Fair offers a unique opportunity to buy works of art directly from First Nations artists and art centres, with all works made and sold ethically. Every dollar from each purchase goes directly to the artists and their community-run art centres, delivering vital economic benefits to communities where art production is an important source of income. Works for sale include paintings, ceramics, sculpture, woven objects, jewellery, textiles, clothes and homewares. Prices range from under $50 to $15,000.
Art centres participating in the 2025 Tarnanthi Art Fair include:
APY Art Centre Collective (SA); Arts Ceduna (SA); Bábbarra Women’s Centre (NT); Baluk Arts (VIC); Barkly Regional Arts (NT); Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre (NT); Bush Balm by Purple House (NT); Gapuwiyak Culture & Arts (NT); Hermannsburg Potters (NT); Ikuntji Artists (NT); Iltja Ntjarra (Many Hands) Art Centre (NT); Iwantja Arts (SA); Iwiṟi Art Studio (SA); Jilamara Arts & Crafts Association (NT); Juluwarlu Art Group (WA); Kira Kiro Artists and Waringarri Aboriginal Arts (WA); Ku Arts (SA); Maningrida Arts & Culture (NT); Martumili Artists (WA); Maruku Arts (NT); Moa Arts (QLD); Munupi Arts (NT); Nagula Jarndu (WA); Ngaruwanajirri Inc. (NT); Ninuku Arts (SA); Port Augusta Arts Collective (SA); Tangentyere Artists and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists (NT); Tjanpi Desert Weavers (NT); Utopia Art Centre (NT)
Tarnanthi Artistic Director Nici Cumpston OAM says, ‘The Tarnanthi Art Fair celebrates the richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and provides the opportunity to personally meet the artists and directly support them with your purchases.’
Over the opening weekend of the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival, in the AGSA Courtyard, Ngugi Quandamooka artist Libby Harward and Gamilaroi artist Dominique Chen will present The Blak Laundry, part-sculptural installation, part-functional laundromat, and part-site for community gathering. The Blak Laundry operates as both a literal and conceptual space for washing dirty laundry, transforming public and institutional spaces into working laundromats where conversations around sovereignty, cultural labour, capitalism and everyday Blak life unfold. Audiences will be invited to engage by observing, washing, folding, listening, yarning, or joining scheduled ‘agitations’ – interactive performances, meditations, games and storytelling sessions.
The opening weekend will also feature a schedule of talks and discussions including the Ku Arts Symposium held at AGSA. Bringing together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, curators, industry advocates and Ku Arts’ founding board directors, the symposium will explore the intersections of art, culture and Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property (ICIP), fostering dialogue, knowledge sharing and community connection. On Saturday 18 October, a panel discussion within the context of First Nations art writing, editing and publishing will be facilitated by Sophia Sambono to celebrate Trace, the latest Indigenous issue of contemporary art magazine Artlink, with guest editors Jessyca Hutchens and Zena Cumpston alongside writer Dominic Guerrera.
‘We look forward to welcoming artists from across Australia and sharing in the celebration of their magnificent work with our visitors. With over 65,000 years of continuous cultural connection to this Country,
the artists each have their unique form of expression and ways to share their stories. Please feel welcome to join us as we discover the richness in storytelling across the entire Tarnanthi program,’ Cumpston says.
The word tarnanthi (pronounced TAR-nan-dee) comes from the language of the Kaurna people, the traditional owners of the Adelaide Plains. It means to spring forth or appear – like the sun and the first emergence of light. Since it began in 2015, Tarnanthi has established itself as Australia’s leading First Nations arts festival, with more than 2.2 million people visiting Tarnanthi exhibitions and events that have showcased the radical ingenuity and expansive practice of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and creatives. Over the last ten years, Tarnanthi has provided a platform for almost 9,500 First Nations artists to present their works of art, building understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture for audiences in Australia and around the world.
An accompanying publication, with newly commissioned essays by First Nations writers, provides further insight and reflection on Tarnanthi’s decade of showcasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.
The 2025 Tarnanthi Festival will run from 17 October 2025 to 18 January 2026 at AGSA and across two dozen partner venues statewide. A selection of works from Too Deadly will then begin a national tour, travelling to six regional venues from 2026-2028 including Rockhampton Museum of Art and Caboolture Regional Art Gallery (QLD); Maitland Regional Art Gallery and Ngununggula Southern Highlands Regional Gallery (NSW); Geelong Gallery (VIC); and Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery (WA).
For full details of the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival and its programs and events, visit agsa.sa.gov.au/Tarnanthi.
About Nici Cumpston OAM Tarnanthi is led by Artistic Director Nici Cumpston OAM, who was also AGSA’s Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art from 2008-2025. Nici is a proud Barkandji person from the Barka, the Darling River in far west New South Wales, who is also of Afghan, English and Irish heritage. Nici is the Artistic Director of the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival and Director of Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, United States, the only art museum outside Australia dedicated to the research and exhibition of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.
Tarnanthi at a glance 2015-2025
- 2.2 million people have attended Tarnanthi exhibitions and events
- 9,477 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists have participated in Tarnanthi through exhibitions and events at AGSA and partner venues and through the Tarnanthi Art Fair
- More than $8.5 million of art has been sold at the Tarnanthi Art Fair, with all money going directly to artists and communities
- $126.5 million in economic expenditure has been generated in South Australia since 2015.
