Fiona Currey-Billyard exhibition

Published on 04 June 2025

Wagga Wagga artist Fiona Currey-Billyard will present her latest exhibition, Night Talk, at Wangaratta Art Gallery this winter. The show features a striking collection of textile works created through meticulous and innovative techniques. Drawing on materials sourced from specific locations—such as nails, staples, hair, and tobacco—Currey-Billyard combines these with textiles and paper to explore texture, memory, and place.

This new body of work reflects Fiona Currey-Billyard’s deeply personal memories of people and places, spanning her childhood in Papua New Guinea and regional Australia to her travels across Europe and Australia. A standout piece in the exhibition pays tribute to her late mother, also a textile artist. Created using rich blue velvet left behind after her mother’s passing, along with her mother’s detailed sketches and plans, the work becomes both a continuation and a conversation between generations.

In 2023, Wangaratta Art Gallery showcased Fiona Currey-Billyard’s compelling work, Place Talk II (2022–2023), when she was selected as a finalist for the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award. Now part of the gallery’s permanent collection, the piece evokes memories of her birthplace in Aitape, Papua New Guinea. Currey-Billyard burnished fine linen with graphite until it gleamed like a dark, glassy tropical sea, punctuated by steel staples arranged to mirror local seasonal ocean currents. As the artist explains, “these staples attempt to pin down the memory of place and thus seek to transform the ocean into a static representation of an impermanent recollection.”

Memory is a central theme in Fiona Currey-Billyard’s practice, and this exhibition delves deeply into her connection with her recently deceased mother.

The title Night Talk refers to the introspective hours of the night, when memories surface and one’s mind chatters. Currey-Billyard’s works translate these nocturnal reflections into tactile forms, contemplating the lasting imprint her mother has left on her life. More broadly, the exhibition explores how traces of our loved ones continue to shape us and resonate within the environments we inhabit.

Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt:

I expect Gallery visitors to appreciate the labour, energy, and innovation contained within Fiona Currey-Billyard’s work. We are proud to host such an exciting artist at the cutting-edge of contemporary textile art practice and are delighted to have acquired her work, Place Talk, 2022-2023, for our diverse and stimulating collection.”

Fiona Currey-Billyard has exhibited widely across Australia and has been a finalist in prestigious art prizes, including the Blake Prize, the Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize, and The National Still Life Prize. Her work is regularly shown alongside leading figures in contemporary Australian textile art, highlighting her place within this dynamic and evolving field.

The exhibition will run from 7 June - 20 July. Bookings and further information are available at www.wangarattaartgallery.com.au

For further information, please contact Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt on r.arndt@wangaratta.vic.gov.au

Image 1: Fiona Currey-Billyard, Mountain I, 2025, graphite, shellac, bitumen and ash on paper. 100 x 100 cm.

Image 2: Fiona Currey-Billyard, My Mother’s Hair My Father’s Tobacco, 2024, fibre, graphite, hair and tobacco smoke, 30 x 100 cm.

Image 3: Fiona Currey-Billyard, Place Talk II, 2022-2023. Steel staples, graphite and rust on linen, steel frame. 160 x 110 x 30cm. Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection.