The 10th Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB) celebrates photography in all its forms as it transforms Victoria’s Central Highlands city into a multi-media exhibition comprising work that is either new, previously unseen in Australia or contextualised afresh, on view in galleries, laneways, natural landscapes, and cultural spaces from 26 August to 22 October 2023.
BIFB 2023 is a catalyst for conversation. This year’s theme is ‘The Real Thing’, a provocation and a nostalgic call to come and see what is real in a 24/7 contemporary world of shutter speed, live streaming, and digital algorithms.

Andy Warhol, Sylvester Stallone, 1980, polacolor type 108. © Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Artists Rights Society [ARS]/Copyright Agency, 2023. Courtesy Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Victoria
Highlights include People Power – Platon, a world-first exclusive-to-Ballarat exhibition of over 120 portraits, a series of visual, empathetic narratives by Platon (USA) featuring the faces of Cate Blanchett, Yoko Ono, Michelle Obama, and Pussy Riot. Similarly, Instant Warhol is a collection of over fifty original Polaroid portraits captured by Andy Warhol (USA) of celebrities and creatives in the ‘70s and ‘80s; a social document of superficiality and fame, most evident in Warhol’s self-portraits, where features are often exaggerated, transformed, or disguised, so the images became caricatures of his real face.
Curated by Jeff Moorfoot OAM (AUS), The Real Thing features fifteen regional Victorian photographers responding to Russell Morris’ lengthy 1969 song of the same name, which reflects the music industry’s horn-driven production values at the time. This view is intensified by the exhibition’s complex 360-degree surround sound. Also, Christian Thompson (AUS) connects past to present with Recital, a live performance and rendition of sound works re-imagining Thompson’s traditional language, Bidjara, hoping that a single spoken word re-classifies the extinct dialect as a living one.
For full program and venues, ballaratfoto.org