The Art Gallery of South Australia today announces Ellie Buttrose as curator of the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Buttrose’s appointment follows the outstanding success at this year’s Venice Biennale. For the first time ever, under her curation Australia won the prestigious Golden Lion award for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennale.
The Australia Pavilion has been transformed into a dramatic installation, kith and kin by Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist Archie Moore isa sprawling hand-drawn family tree extending back 65,000 years and memorial to First Nations peoples who have died in police custody.
Art Gallery of South Australia Acting Director Emma Fey says, ‘As the country’s longest-running survey of contemporary Australian art, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art has continuously expanded its audience, garnered national and international attention, and offered a dynamic platform for artists during its 30-year history. We are thrilled to announce Ellie Buttrose as the curator of the 2026 Adelaide Biennial. Her wealth of experience and nuanced curatorial practice promises to deliver a captivating exhibition and attract new audiences.’
With applications from across Australia vying for the coveted curatorial position, the judging panel was unanimous in their decision and support of Ellie Buttrose. The Biennial’s 2026 selection panel, comprised AGSA Acting Director Emma Fey, outgoing AGSA Director Rhana Devenport and outgoing Assistant Director Lisa Slade along with Artistic Director Adelaide Festival Ruth Mackenzie CBE and Geelong Gallery Director and CEO Jason Smith.
The panel were enthusiastic in their support of Buttrose who invites risks and experimentation, they said, ‘we feel a genuine sense of excitement with the curatorial vision for the Biennial proposed by Ellie Buttrose. The panel was impressed with Buttrose’s careful observation of and deep feeling for a diversity of artists’ nuanced and complex understandings of our contemporary world, and believe strongly that Buttrose’s brand of curatorial leadership and collaboration will bring before us an especially thought-provoking and relevant Biennial exhibition and range of integrally associated programs.’
Buttrose brings extensive curatorial experience in Australian art museums including her current role as Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, where she oversees collection development, realises ambitious commissions and delivers thought-provoking exhibitions and collection displays.
Buttrose is excited to be selected as Adelaide Biennial Curator for 2026 she says, ‘‘I am honoured to be selected as the Curator of the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. The Biennial is unique in the Australian arts calendar in term of its curatorial ambitions and I look forward to contributing to its rich history through my collaborations with artists, arts writers and historians, and the AGSA team.’
The Adelaide Biennial has historically been a vehicle through which AGSA grows its holdings of contemporary art. Seven works of art from the 2024 Adelaide Biennial: Inner Sanctum have been acquired for the AGSA collection including two works by Heather B. Swann, Kore 2024 and Things there is no one to tell, 2024, Lillian O’Neil’s The place we dissolve, 2023, Clara Adolphs, Waterfall, 2024, Jacobus Capone’s Forewarning (Act 4: Demarcation), 2022, Peter Maloney’s, Gone tomorrow, 2002, and Jessica Loughlin in collaboration with the late designer Khai Liew’s site specific installation Solari 2024.
Since 1990, conceived as part of the Adelaide Festival, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art has created career-defining opportunities for close to 500 artists, and been experienced by more than 1.8 million visitors.
The 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art will be presented from 27 February – 7 June as part of the 2026 Adelaide Festival.
ABOUT THE ADELAIDE BIENNIAL OF AUSTRALIAN ART
Known for its risk taking and expansive vision, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art has demonstrated a significant and sustained practice for more than three decades. Inaugurated in 1990, it is the country’s longest running survey of contemporary Australian art and an important platform for Australian artists to realise new works and projects of a scale that require an institutional context for their conception and presentation. The Adelaide Biennial has had a lasting impact on Australian art, on the careers of artists, curators and arts professionals, and on the state of South Australia as a wellspring for contemporary art. The nationwide Biennial Ambassadors Program plays an essential role in supporting the programs artistic ambition and championing the practice of Australian artists and curators.
Presented in association with the Adelaide Festival, with generous support received from the Art Gallery of South Australia Biennial Ambassadors Program and Principal Donor The Balnaves Foundation. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.
ELLIE BUTTROSE
Ellie Buttrose is the Curator of kith and kin by Archie Moore in the Australia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024, which won the Gold Lion for Best National Participation. She is Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (GAGOMA). At QAGOMA, Ellie oversees collection development, realises ambitious commissions and delivers thought-provoking exhibitions and collection displays. Ellie recently curated: Living Patterns 2023, focused on artists who deploy abstraction as a political as well as formal device; Embodied Knowledge 2022, a survey of contemporary Queensland art with co-curator Katina Davidson; Work, Work, Work 2019, about the entwinement of civic and artistic labour; andLimitless Horizon: Vertical Perspective 2017, which rethought the impact of drone vision on contemporary art via the bird’s-eye view paintings of First Nations Australian songlines and the floating perspective in Chinese and Japanese landscape painting traditions. Ellie is a member of the curatorial team for The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 2024, 2021 and 2018.
In 2020, 2019 and 2018, Ellie was a guest curator for the Brisbane International Film Festival. She curatedMaterial Place: Reconsidering Australian Landscapes 2019 at University of New South Wales Galleries, Sydney. Ellie was on the curatorium for Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence 2017 at Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Ellie is an advisor to Parallel, an Australian Research Council Linkage project between University of New South Wales, Western Sydney University, and University of Sydney in partnership with the Murray Art Museum Albury.
