Hayley Millar Baker

Hayley Millar Baker is a Gunditjmara and Djabwurrung visual artist born and based in South-West Melbourne, Australia (1990).

Through examining the role our multi-faceted identities play in translating and conveying our experiences, Hayley works to interrogate and abstract autobiographical narratives and themes relating to her own identity – drawing on and centring philosophies of spirituality, Indigeneity, womanhood, motherhood, and the female psyche. Her oblique storytelling methods and methodologies encourage us to embrace that the passage of identity, culture, and memory are not linear nor fixed.

Most recently Hayley has been commissioned to create major works for RISING Festival’s Shadow Spirit (2023), the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s Between Waves (2023), the National Gallery of Australia’s 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony (2022), PHOTO2021: International Festival of Photography (2021), the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera: Young Australian Artists (2018), and the International Ballarat Foto Biennale (2017). In 2021 Hayley presented her first early career-survey There we were all in one place at UTS Gallery, curated by Stella McDonald which toured nationally throughout 2022. The accompanying catalogue ‘There we were all in one place’ received the highly commended award for ‘Best Small Exhibition Catalogue’ in The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s 2022 ‘Arts Writing and Publishing Awards’.

Hayley has won the John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for the National Photography Prize (2020), the Darebin Art Prize (2019), and the Special Commendation Award for The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize (2017). She has been a finalist in several prestigious national art prizes including the Ramsay Art Prize (2019 and 2021), Bowness Photography Prize (2021), John Fries Award (2019), and international prizes including Venice’s Arte Laguna Prize at the Arsenale Nord (2023), Hong Kong’s Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2021), and United Arab Emirates Vantage Point Sharjah 9 (2021). Hayley’s works are held in significant national and international public institutional collections.

Hayley Millar Baker is represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery, Naarm Melbourne, and Cassandra Bird, Eora Nation Sydney.