Regional Arts Fund: Marnpi Festival
15 October 2025
From 2 August to 20 September 2025, Broken Hill art space Slag Heap Projects held the first Marnpi Festival, a First Nations-led arts and community festival.
The festival tells the Marnpi Dreaming story, as explained by Barkandji artist Krystle Evans:
“At the heart of the Marnpi Dreaming story is a tale of connection. The story follows the journey of Marnpi, a wounded bronzewing pigeon, a bird known for its mournful metronomic whoo….After being wounded, the bird flew across Country, its blood, excrement & feathers leaving behind sacred sites, ochre and the minerals of the land from a wound that would spill blood and gold.”
“The story is an apotheosis of Aboriginal knowledge, predating western science. It declares an understanding of geo-heritage features in the cultural landscape, connecting Aboriginal people from different lands to form a geographical and cultural map transcendent of borders. As the Marnpi story preserves multifaceted Aboriginal cultural and geographical knowledge of Country, passed from ancestors to future generations, so too does the artwork here.”
This event was co-designed by Badger Bates and Slag Heap Projects, alongside, Anthony Hayward and Nancy Bates, and in partnership with The Old Vic Gallery Studio and Premier Automotive Tyres. It consisted of two exhibitions, including a display of works by Badger Bates with grandson Baaka Bates at Slag Heap Projects and one by Anthony Hayward at The Old Vic Gallery Studio across the road.
The three artists on display, Badger Bates, Anthony Hayward and Baaka Bates represent three generations and showcased, “the importance [of] the continuation of cultural practice [as] something we feel within our bodies and bones,” according to Hayward.
Grandfather and Grandson, Badger and Baaka Bates, put forward new and recent works, characterised by a strong sense of identity and close association with their land and its stories. Hayward blended traditional forms with contemporary materials, including sandstone, tin and salvaged wood, to reclaim cultural practice through craft and storytelling, and to inhabit space in suspended tension.
The festival also brought art onto the streets, spilling outside the gallery spaces on the opening night. It launched with a Welcome to Country by Dulcie O’Donnell and Indiah Clark, food by Wilyakali/Barkandji man Raymond O’Donnell, and music by Barkindji songwoman Nancy Bates.
Evans described Marnpi Festival as an invitation for the audience to, “…think about the power that all things carry, of stories, imagery and objects, of what each means and how they connect…What is on display here is pride in reclaiming our power through maintaining ancient practices that speak to who we are.”
Regional Arts NSW is proud to have supported this project, in collaboration with Regional Arts Australia, through the Regional Arts Fund. Projects like this are essential for regional communities, providing work for regional artists and empowering First Nations artists to tell their own stories.
Hester Lyon, one of the founding co-Directors of Slag Heap Projects said of the funding, “…the funding was essential for the delivery of the project. It would not have been possible without it. It got this (hopefully) ongoing project off the ground and helped us pay artists properly and pay community members properly.”
“Getting funding out into the regions, particularly far west NSW, is really essential for validating the artistic practice that’s already going on here. With it we can allow people to continue to live and continue making work within the community that inspires them. I think the funding creates possibilities for sustainability in a financial sense, but more so in a cultural sense. It has this cyclical effect: artists are supported to develop ideas or experiment, and produce work and that bleeds into the rest of the community.”
To read more about the Marnpi Festival in Broken Hill and stay up to date with Slag Heap Project’s future programs, visit slagheapprojects.com and @slagheapprojects on Instagram.
To read the exhibition essay by Krystle Evans, visit slagheapprojects.com/Marnpi-Festival-Essay
Images: Marnpi Festival opening event, Saturday 2nd August 2025, corner of Oxide St & Chapple St, Broken Hill. Photography by Em Jensen.
