John Harvey
Walter Waia
John Harvey and Walter Waia are Torres Strait Islander artists from Saibai Island whose collaboration weaves together contemporary practice and cultural knowledge grounded in Saibai Island world view. Working across mediums including film, theatre, installation, choreography, and music, their work explores memory, belonging, and home against a backdrop of rising sea levels and diasporic identity. Their acclaimed short film, Katele (Mudskipper) (2022), exemplifies their voice: lyrical; grounded, and resonant in deep cultural authority. They create contemporary mythologies that are inseparable from culture, language, island homeland, and community – art that embodies a living continuum of ancestral knowledge. At the Biennale of Sydney, their work will stand as both testimony and invitation.
John Harvey
Born 1975, Australia
Lives and works on the Sunshine Coast, Australia
Kalaw Kawaw Ya (Saibai Island, Torres Strait Islands)/English descent
Walter Waia
Born 1959, Australia
Lives and works in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia Kalaw Kawaw Ya (Saibai Island, Torres Strait Islands)
The Heart of the Universe 2026
three-channel video installation, sound, pandanus mats, looped 25 mins
Editor: Susan Schweikert ASE Cinematography: Bonnie Elliott ACS Sound Composition: Andrew Belletty
Choreographer, Composer & Cultural Consultant: Sedrick Waia
Cultural Consultant: Mariana Babia Producer (Saibai Island): Elsie Waia Additional Composition: Leon Rodgers Post Production: The Post Lounge Camera Equipment: Panavision Production Company: Brown Cabs
Thanks to the performances and generous support of the community of Saibai Island
Archive from: John Harvey personal collection, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge (UK) – Haddon Collection; State Library of Queensland; National Film & Sound Archive; ABC, SBS, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council (NATSIAC)
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain with generous support from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, Annamila First Nations Foundation, and generous assistance from the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, provided through Regional Arts Australia, administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance
Courtesy of the artists
Standing 1.7 metres above sea level at its highest point, Saibai Island in the Torres Strait, where water is rising six to eight millimetres a year, is at the coal face of the climate crisis. Embodying the deep interconnectedness of culture, people and ecosystems, Saibai Island’s sprawling mangroves are both the backdrop and centrepiece of The Heart of the Universe, John Harvey and Walter Waia’s examination of loss and renewal.
Transcending the binary of perpetrator (colonial powers) and victim (Indigenous peoples) to cultivate a more complex understanding of climate change as a shared human experience, The Heart of the Universe sends environmental vulnerability and cultural strength into collision. This reverberation is captured by a soundscape which weaves natural recording, First Nations voices speaking Kalaw Kawaw Ya, and deep drum rhythms, into an immersive heartbeat. This ever-collapsing duality is extended by the merging of new and archival footage which presents time itself as a shifting continuum, enveloping audiences in a Saibai Island perspective. Here the physical world diminishes as the spiritual realm, guided by Indigenous philosophy, rises to the vibrating sound of a shared heartbeat.