Haley Millar Baker awarded the 2025 Georges Mora Fellowship

Narrm-based artist Haley Millar Baker, has been awarded the 2025 Georges Mora Fellowship, including a $10,000 grant, a residency at State Library Victoria, one year’s premium membership to the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).

A panel of judges including, Katharina Prugger (Curator, NGV), Caroline Field (Curator, ACU) and

artist Shivanjani Lal ( Georges Mora Fellow 2020) were greatly impressed by Millar Baker’s proposed project:

‘My research focuses on Indigenous hauntology—the ways in which past, present, and future converge in the spectral presence of culture, memory, and spirituality. This fellowship will allow me to delve deeper into the interplay between horror, Indigenous epistemologies, and rematriation, examining how Indigenous narratives of the supernatural resist erasure and assert sovereignty. My work challenges dominant portrayals of Aboriginal spirituality as either mystified or lost to time, instead framing it as an active force in contemporary cultural restoration.

Millar Baker said that the fellowship would be instrumental in expanding her practice beyond conventional artistic methodologies, allowing her to rigorously engage with historical archives, literary theory, and critical hauntology to inform her film work. Millar Baker’s residency at State Library Victoria will allow her to engage with archival materials through an Indigenous lens—seeking not just what is recorded, but what exists in the silences, gaps, and omissions.

Chairman of the Georges Mora Fellowship Board, Clive Scott AM, said: 

 “We are delighted to award Haley the 2025 Fellowship. It is a remarkable project that I’m sure will help position Hayley’s work within national and international discourse on Indigenous futurism, hauntology, and experimental cinema - the Board and our supporters look forward to witnessing and participating in the end result.” 

Hayley Millar Baker is a First Nations artist of Gunditjmara, Djabwurrung, and Nira-Bulok Taungurung descent through her maternal lineage, with Anglo-Indian and Luso-Brasileiro ancestry paternally. Her practice intricately visualizes Indigenous feminine narratives, weaving history, identity, and spirituality through photography, collage, film, and video.