Ahead of Venice, the Biennale team brought ideas of home to the pavilion.

The 2025 Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale showcases HOME — an ambitious, immersive project that embodies the strength of Indigenous knowledge systems, cultural practices, and design. Led by Creative Directors Dr. Michael Mossman, Jack Gillmer-Lilley, and Professor Emily McDaniel, HOME urges audiences to consider their connection to home, homelands and what it means to care for all places we connect, design and move through as if they were our home.

The creative powerhouse team behind the project, also known as ‘Creative Sphere’, includes a collective of First Nations architects, designers and practitioners including Elle Davidson, Kaylie Salvatori, Clarence Slockee, and Bradley Kerr – curator of MPavilion’s BLAKitecture series. 

MPavilion is proud to have presented two interactive events over the summer centred on this year’s Australian Pavilion theme of ‘HOME’, programmed by Bradley Kerr — curator of MPavilion’s BLAKitecture series and member of MPavilion’s Curatorial Collective. 

To explore more about the FULLY REALISED 2025 Australian Pavilion by the all-First Nations team, [click here]. 

The first event saw sand cover the entries of Ando’s pavilion, with text provocations along the walls asking ‘What reminds you of home?’ and ‘How do you relate to your community?’ Dr. Michael Mossman, Jack Gillmer-Lilley and Bradley Kerr introduced the ideas behind HOME in Venice, which invites audiences to become active collaborators, rather than passive onlookers. Native grasses, clay collected in buckets and bark lined the sides of the interior space, inviting visitors to get their shoes off, get their hands dirty, reflect, and engage in personal mark-making. 

Messy hands, giggles and candid conversations about markers of home saw this hands-on event illuminate deeply personal histories, temporarily drawn in wet clay on the walls. The shape of a fruit from far North Queensland, a land formation from an overseas hometown, a silhouette of a special someone — the responses to ‘home’ were varied and thoughtful.

Listen back here:

The second event welcomed audiences into a profound in-conversation facilitated by Bradley Kerr with Creative Sphere members Kaylie Salvatori and Clarence Slockee, and Australian Pavilion Ambassador Professor Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO who treated the group with a beautiful impromptu performance.

The panel shared stories of home, talking about architecture and landscape, dreams and memories. Luckily, this chat is accessible as a podcast, embedded below:

MPavilion’s annual BLAKitecture series aims to centralise Indigenous voices in conversations about architecture, the representation of histories, and the present and future states of our built environments.

HOME is supported by the Australian Institute of Architects, Brickworks and Creative Australia.