From 7 February to 2 March 2025, Perth Festival invites audiences to play with mischief-makers and be challenged by truth-tellers in a program featuring more than 380 artists, including 143 international and 173 local West Australian artists.
With over 104 events, festival highlights include five world premieres, a further six Australian premieres or exclusives, and seven Perth Festival commissions. The world premiere of Karla Bidi opens the festival, transforming the Derbarl Yerrigan | Swan River into an illuminated pathway inspired by the Noongar tradition of lighting fires to greet and guide visitors. Beacons of light stretch along the river from the hills to the Indian Ocean as a symbolic campfire of warmth, welcome, and inclusivity.
Alice Guiness, Burndud, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 100 × 80cm. Courtesy the artist and Juluwarlu Art Group, Western Australia
Art in all its forms from Western Australia and across the globe is on show in a program that aims to surprise and delight, such as through the festival’s major new initiative, Boorloo Contemporary, which has the annual East Perth Power Station Commission at its heart – the illumination of the long-dormant site into a kaleidoscope of colour and expression. Noongar artists Allan Yarran, Ilona McGuire and Daniel Hansen are featured in 2025 with large-scale work responding to the power station and its surrounds; these First Nations artists speak to the history of the site in poetry and living colour.
Other Boorloo Contemporary commissions include Killa: Pindan to Plate, a west Kimberley Saltwater story and literal visual feast; Stolen Wages, featuring newly commissioned paintings by Gooniyandi Elder and artist Mervyn Street; and Burndud Ground, featuring paintings of bold colour and vibrating patterns by Elder and senior artist Alice Guiness, inviting audiences to share in rich Yindjibarndi culture.
Visit the website for locations and dates:
perthfestival.com.au
