Warraba Weatherall
Born 1987, Australia
Lives and works in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia Kamilaroi 

Setting Sun 2026
aluminium, polymer resin, enamel
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain with generous support from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane 

An investigation into the living legacy of colonial collecting practices, Kamilaroi artist Warraba Weatherall’s Setting Sun interrogates religion and the natural sciences as instruments of empirical expansion. The wall-mounted sculptures evoke the forms of filing cabinets and tabernacle frames — each functioning as both an icon of worship and a signifier of violence. While tabernacle structures became popular during the Italian Renaissance, their earlier use as tombs and repositories for sacred materials produces a jarring juxtaposition when read through Indigenous experience. 

Behind the latticed frames sit cultural forms commonly referred to as shadowboxes — sculptural assemblages used to articulate kinship relations within the artists’ community. Here, each internal form is dissected and decontextualised, framing a lineage of religious and scientific supremacy as modes of systemic violence that position Indigenous identities as anomalous. Weatherall’s work seeks to reposition the historical declaration that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” Despite superficial shifts across generations, we are still awaiting the Setting Sun.