La Trobe Art Institute

La Trobe Art Institute La Trobe University's centre for contemporary art in Bendigo’s arts precinct. Admission is always free. La Trobe Art Institute was established in 2013.

We produce exhibitions, lectures, forums, residencies and cultural events and offer social spaces that serve our wider community. Our Peter Elliott-designed premises in the Bendigo CBD include two galleries, a tiered auditorium, apartment, studio, common room, meeting room and outdoor courtyards. Our program includes exhibitions, film series, residencies, lectures and forums, professional developm

ent, cultural exchange and social events that support community advocacy and debate. Our work continues the dynamic legacy of the La Trobe University’s commitment to visual arts including through teaching and research, collections (established in 1966) and dedicated art galleries (since 1982).

'My Blood Sings Old Songs' is now open across our gallery spaces.Curated by Maya HodgeArtists: Atong Atem, Sonja Hodge, ...
02/06/2026

'My Blood Sings Old Songs' is now open across our gallery spaces.

Curated by Maya Hodge

Artists: Atong Atem, Sonja Hodge, Jenna Lee, Tracey Moffatt, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis, Leyla Stevens, and wani toaishara

'My Blood Sings Old Songs' continues until 9 August. Stay tuned for updates on artist talks and public programs.

Image: 'My Blood Sings Old Songs' 2026 installation view, La Trobe Art Institite, Djandak/Bendigo. Photo: Leon Schoots

Save the date: Stepping Out returns on June 20 2026.Join us for a day of conversations, shared experiences and practical...
29/05/2026

Save the date: Stepping Out returns on June 20 2026.

Join us for a day of conversations, shared experiences and practical advice, connecting emerging visual artists with creative professionals from across regional Victoria and beyond, presented in partnership with Regional Arts Victoria with support from the City of Greater Bendigo.

Speakers include:
Amelia Wallin, Azza Zein, Lauren Ellis, Bron Belcher, Mandy Feild, Channon Goodwin, George Criddle, Hayden Stuart, Jacqui Shelton, Jude Anderson, Karen Annett, Laura Woodward, Polly Stanton, Jo Porter, Zena Zada Cumpston.

Full program and booking details to be released next week.











gallery

Save the date for the next Music Image Time Lab!Sunday 7 June, from 2 pm, with some exciting experimental music, perform...
26/05/2026

Save the date for the next Music Image Time Lab!

Sunday 7 June, from 2 pm, with some exciting experimental music, performance and video art.

Music Image Time Lab is always free, and open to new contributors. See our website or https://www.paulfletcherartwork.com/music-image-time.html for more information

This Friday night, join us to celebrate the launch of our latest exhibition, 'My Blood Sings Old Songs'.'My Blood Sings ...
19/05/2026

This Friday night, join us to celebrate the launch of our latest exhibition, 'My Blood Sings Old Songs'.

'My Blood Sings Old Songs' is an exhibition that speaks to embodied memory and its legacies, guest curated by Maya Hodge.

Launch event Friday 22 May, 5 to 7 pm
with Welcome to Country by Peta Hudson

The artists in 'My Blood Sings Old Songs' capture what is deeply felt but not always said. The works in this exhibition resonate over time, unravelling layers of the body. Through photography, video, and performance, they reflect the quiet weight of being seen, where movement becomes a vessel for remembrance. Hovering between an ending and a beginning, each artistic gesture acknowledges a certain sadness in memories that cannot be shared with those who were never there. Together, the exhibiting artists consider how memory is embodied and passed on, becoming entangled with grief and joy. Across the exhibition, cultural storytelling unfolds in gestures and resonance—held within our bloodlines.

Guest curator: Maya Hodge (Lardil)
Artists: Atong Atem, Sonja Hodge (Lardil), Jenna Lee (Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman, and KarraJarri), Tracey Moffatt, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis (Pitta Pitta), Leyla Stevens, and wani toaishara.

Image: Leyla Stevens, still from Kidung (2019), three channel film, stereo sound, 10:58mins.

My Blood Sings Old Songs
20 May to 9 August 2026

Atong Atem and Jenna Lee appear courtesy MARS Gallery
Tracey Moffatt courtesy Murray Art Museum Albury Collection

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We are excited to announce an exhibition of new commissions and key works that speak to embodied memory and its legacies...
08/05/2026

We are excited to announce an exhibition of new commissions and key works that speak to embodied memory and its legacies.

Guest curated by Maya Hodge, 'My Blood Sings Old Songs' presents works by artists Atong Atem, Leyla Stevens, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis (Pitta Pitta), Jenna Lee (Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman, and KarraJarri), Sonja Hodge (Lardil), Tracey Moffatt and wani toaishara.

The artists in 'My Blood Sings Old Songs' capture what is deeply felt but not always said. The works in this exhibition resonate over time, unravelling layers of the body. Through photography, video, and performance, they reflect the quiet weight of being seen, where movement becomes a vessel for remembrance.

Hovering between an ending and a beginning, each artistic gesture holds the knowledge that there’s a certain sadness to memories that cannot be shared with those who were never there. Yet what ties us together is a shared understanding that ripples across cultures and communities, through performance and the spaces between what is known and shadowed.

Atists Atong Atem, Sonja Hodge, Jenna Lee, Tracey Moffatt, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis, Leyla Stevens, and wani toaishara consider how memory is embodied and passed on to honour echoes of legacy, entangled with grief and joy, and cultural storytelling unfolds in gestures and resonance—held within our bloodlines.

Join us to celebrate the opening of this exhibition on Friday 22 May, 5 to 7 pm

My Blood Sings Old Songs
20 May to 9 August 2026

Exhibition identity design by Jenna Lee

Atong Atem and Jenna Lee appear courtesy MARS Gallery
Tracey Moffatt courtesy Murray Art Museum Albury Collection

.mlee

As winter deepends and the days grow shorter, Raf McDonald's Biannual Façade Commission 'Cars and other gifts from the s...
08/05/2026

As winter deepends and the days grow shorter, Raf McDonald's Biannual Façade Commission 'Cars and other gifts from the sun' lights up View St!

McDonald's work consistently engages the material realities of pollution and industrial waste through a process of burying paintings at contaminated sites, relinquishing control to the staining and mould produced by chemicals in the soil. This method reframes how we consider Indigenous-settler relations in Australia: how can one account not only for their own actions, but also make visible – and work with – the material conditions and ongoing fallout of the past?

Image: Raf McDonald, 'Cars and other gifts from the sun' 2026. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Leon Schoots

We are entering our final weekend of 'All That is Alive' we reflect on a lively show that has travelled from Gadigal Cou...
06/05/2026

We are entering our final weekend of 'All That is Alive' we reflect on a lively show that has travelled from Gadigal Country in Sydney to Djaara Country in Bendigo, being kept alive, fermenting, composting, and adapting along the way.

Thank you to our fellow curators and commissioners, Stella Rosa McDonald and Connie Anthes at UTS Gallery, and most of all thank you to all of the contributing artists: Tully Arnot, Saskia van Pagee Anderson, Kylie Banyard, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Sonja Carmichael, Madeleine Collie and George Criddle, Other Matter, Sarah Poulgrain, Mandy Quadrio, Keg de Souza, Magnetic Topographies, and Ivey Wawn.

As a project, 'All That is Alive' has brought together diverse practices to reflect on life in its many forms, evoking the entangled relations that sustain us and imagining new ways of living together.

Image 1: Magnetic Topographies, 'Materials Library', 2025.
Image 2: Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael, 'Daybiyil Bajara (Water Footprints)', 2021
Image 3: Keg de Souza, 'Growth in the Shadows' 2025, and Ivey Wawn, 'Feeling in a triangle' 2025−26
Image 4: Madeleine Collie and George Criddle, 'A Fermentation Plot' 2025−26
Image 5: Kylie Banyard and Saskia van Pagee Anderson, 'Groundwork' 2025
Image 6: Sarah Poulgrain, 'Tube bending, houseboat railing' 2025
Image 7: Kylie Banyard and Saskia van Pagee Anderson with Hal Banyard-Coyte, 'Bubblefume' 2026
Image 8: OTHER MATTER signage, design by Alex Tanazefti. Madeleine Collie 'A Fermentation Plot' 2025-6
Image 9: Mandy Quadrio, 'wurnenner' 2024, Tully Arnot, 'Silicon' 2025, Magnetic Topographies, 'Materials Library' 2025.
Image 10: Tully Arnot, 'Silicon' 2025
All photos by Leon Schoots

.vanpagee.anderson

As we enter the final week of 'All That is Alive', come down to the gallery on this Thursday lunchtime and hear from the...
05/05/2026

As we enter the final week of 'All That is Alive', come down to the gallery on this Thursday lunchtime and hear from the curators of the exhibition.

Join co-curator of All That is Alive La Trobe Art Institute Curator Jacqui Shelton for a relaxed and conversational tour of the exhibition.

We offer free guided tours and curatorial walk-throughs for schools and community groups to engage with the themes and materials of our exhibitions. Interested groups are invited to get in touch at [email protected]

Image: Kylie Banyard and Saskia van Pagee Anderson with Hal Banyard, 'Bubblefume', 2025-26. Courtesy of the artists. Image: Leon Schoots

As we approach the final week of 'All That is Alive', don't miss you chance to see local Bendigo-based artists Kylie Ban...
30/04/2026

As we approach the final week of 'All That is Alive', don't miss you chance to see local Bendigo-based artists Kylie Banyard and Saskia van Pagee Anderson's new commission, 'Groundwork'.

Van Pagee Anderson and Banyard invite visitors into a space of tactile and visual play, shaped by the slow unfolding of material relationships. Here, oversized Correa and Billy Button flowers bloom among painterly gestures and sculptural forms. Plants sustain us in ways that extend beyond their nutritional value; Groundwork captures the care and wonder that arises through purposeful coexistence with the vegetal world.

Images: Kylie Banyard and Saskia van Pagee Anderson, Groundwork, 2025. Courtesy of the artists. Photos: Leon Schoots

.vanpagee.anderson

There are still a few spots left in our workshop this weekend, with artist George Criddle and curator Jacqui Shelton!Joi...
28/04/2026

There are still a few spots left in our workshop this weekend, with artist George Criddle and curator Jacqui Shelton!

Join us Saturday from 1 to 3 pm for a participatory workshop that brings together reading, making, and storytelling through the living practice of fermentation, presented as part of A Fermentation Plot in our current exhibition, All That is Alive.

To learn more and book your place, visit the link below.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/fermentation-workshop-with-artist-george-criddle-tickets-1987286284774

Address

121 View Street
Bendigo, VIC
3550

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 5pm
Thursday 10am - 5pm
Friday 10am - 5pm
Saturday 12pm - 5pm
Sunday 12pm - 5pm

Telephone

+61354447272

Website

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