About

Hayley Millar Baker (b. 1990) is a lens-based artist living and working in Melbourne, Australia. Her work is deeply influenced by her Aboriginality, belonging to the Gunditjmara, Djabwurrung, and Nira-Bulok Taungurung peoples through her maternal lineage, and Anglo-Indian and Luso-Brasileiro ancestry on her paternal side. This union of cultural influences shapes her perspective, grounding her practice in the exploration of Indigenous resilience and the empowerment of ancestral connection.

Drawing on ancestral knowledge, mythology, and philosophies of existence, Hayley explores the tangible and the spectral. Through photography, collage, film, and video, she constructs evocative visual narratives that engage viewers in the emotional and psychological landscapes of Indigenous womxn, framed through an Indigenous female lens. Hayley’s moving image practice is defined by two distinct approaches: her film works move through narrative, embodying immersive cinema, while her video works hold space, emphasising presence, duration, and performance. The depth, strength, and agency of the figures within her works are central to Hayley’s work, emphasising their vital role in sustaining ecological, spiritual, and cultural balance. Rooted in a cyclical understanding of life and death, shaped by ritual and transformation, the conceptual framework behind her practice inspires an exploration of Indigenous existence and the ongoing political forces that impact it.

Deliberate obfuscation of the image defines Hayley’s practice—alternately concealing and revealing—challenging perception and inviting deeper contemplation on existence, survival, and spiritual continuity. This approach mirrors the ongoing, unfolding process of existential and metaphysical understanding, encouraging reflection on the complexities of Indigenous life, resistance, and the restoration of matriarchal knowledges and practices. Hayley’s work serves as both a reclamation and a celebration of the power, agency, and deep connection Indigenous womxn have to their ancestral selves and spiritual inheritance within a world marked by colonial violence.

“Millar Baker’s encrypted images purposefully elude easy categorisation. They are cinematic, documentary, archival, and surreal still-lifes that resist a narrow view of what it means to live as an Aboriginal person in Australia.”

– Hetti Perkins, curator, cultural adviser, writer, and activist.

Hayley’s work has been prominently featured in many major group and solo exhibitions, both locally and globally. These include esteemed institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), MCA Australia (Sydney), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Australian War Memorial (Canberra), Nasher Museum of Art Duke University (North Carolina, USA), Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide), Melbourne Museum (Melbourne), Fremantle Arts Centre (Fremantle), Heide Museum of Modern Art (Melbourne), Chau Chak Wing Museum (Sydney), Al Hamriyah Studios (Sharjah, UAE), Artspace Sydney (Sydney), UQ Art Museum (Brisbane), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), SAMSTAG Museum (Adelaide), MUMA (Melbourne), Salamanca Arts Centre (Hobart), Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery (Broken Hill), Flinders Street Ballroom (Melbourne), Shepparton Art Museum (Shepparton), Ballarat Art Gallery (Ballarat), FUMA Gallery (Adelaide), ACE Open (Adelaide), The Substation (Melbourne), MAMA (Albury), and UNSW Gallery (Sydney). Hayley has also received significant commissions from prestigious institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia, Rising Festival, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), PHOTO2021: International Festival of Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA Australia), and the International Ballarat Foto Biennale.

Hayley has received numerous respected awards and accolades, including the National Photography Prize’s John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship, the Darebin Art Prize, and the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize’s Special Commendation. She was shortlisted for the Australian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale with curator Erin Vink and has been a finalist in prestigious national awards such as the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Ramsay Art Prize, UNSW’s John Fries Award, the Bowness Photography Prize, and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award. Internationally, she has been a finalist in Venice’s Arte Laguna Prize, the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in Hong Kong, and the Vantage Point Sharjah in the UAE. Her notable residencies include the DESA Artist-in-Residence, Ubud, Bali; the Gertrude Contemporary studio residency; artist-in-residence, Monash University in Prato, Italy; Photography Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria; and artist-in-residence at The Substation.

Hayley Millar Baker is represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.