HAYLEY MILLAR BAKER IS FIRST NATIONS (GUNDITJMARA, DJABWURRUNG), BORN IN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. SHE COMPLETED A BACHELOR OF FINE ARTS (2010) AND MASTER OF FINE ARTS (2017) AT RMIT UNIVERSITY IN MELBOURNE.

Through examining the role our identities play in translating and conveying our experiences, Hayley works across photography, collage, and film to interrogate and abstract autobiographical narratives and themes relating to her own identity. Her oblique storytelling methods and methodologies encourage us to embrace that the passage of identity, culture, and memory are not linear nor fixed.

Hayley has exhibited nationally and internationally, including as a finalist in several prestigious art prizes including the Ramsay Art Prize (2019 and 2021), Bowness Photography Prize (2021), John Fries Award (2019), Hong Kong’s Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2021) and United Arab Emirates Vantage Point Sharjah 9 (2021). Hayley was the recipient of the John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for the National Photography Prize (2020), the winner of the Darebin Art Prize (2019), and received the Special Commendation Award for The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize (2017). She was selected as one of eight artists to exhibit in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera: Young Australian Artists (2018) and has been awarded several residencies including the Artist-in-residence at Monash University Prato, Italy (2022), the First Nations Residency at Collingwood Yards (2021), and the Photography Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria (2019). Hayley was a feature artist in PHOTO2021: International Festival of Photography (2021) and has exhibited in other art festivals including the International Ballarat Foto Biennale (2017), and Tarnanthi (2017). Hayley will present a new commission for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia (2022).

In 2021 Hayley presented her first early career-survey ‘There we were all in one place’ at UTS Gallery, curated by Stella McDonald. The exhibition brought together five pivotal bodies of work from Hayley’s early career for the first time and will tour Australia in 2022.

Millar Baker’s work is held in significant collections across Australia including the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Melbourne Museum, Melbourne; Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne; Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne; Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), Albury; State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; University of Technology Sydney, Sydney; University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney; Warrnambool Art Gallery, Warrnambool; Shepparton Art Museum (SAM), Shepparton; Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne; Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham; City of Melbourne, Melbourne.