Future Country: Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions 2026

Future Country is the second iteration of the Country Road + NGV First Nations Commissions initiative. This national mentorship program pairs eight emerging First Nations artists and designers with established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creatives, presenting a unique opportunity to connect and share intergenerational knowledge and foster artistic and professional growth.

Future Country celebrates land, legacy, community and cultural continuity. In response to the exhibition’s key themes of ancestral memory, re-storying, truth-telling and future-making, participating artists have created deeply personal, culturally significant and innovative works that engage Indigenous futures and envision alternative realities.

Spanning weaving, photography, sculpture, possum-skin cloak making, moving image, sound and design, the eight new commissions explore non-linear notions of time, honour intergenerational knowledge and convey embodied and relational understandings of place.

Each of the artists shares an empowering message affirming the strength, resilience and sovereignty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, languages and cultures past, present and future.

Presented together in Future Country, the artists collectively reflect the dynamism and depth of contemporary First Nations art and design by emerging practitioners.