Virginia Hilyard is a visual and media artist whose practice is grounded in an experimental aesthetic and an interest in the convergence of digital and analogue image-making – using technology and the hand-made mark. Producing film, video, sound and installation work since 1985, Virginia has contributed widely to moving image culture in Australia and overseas and has worked collaboratively with artists of other disciplines including composers, sculptors, poets, writers and performance artists. 

Virginia's recent works include Remembering Yellow, a collaboration with her elderly mother who lives with dementia, for the Trans-southeast Asia Triennial, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Museum, 2021; systems collapse, a sound performance on Remembrance Day for Lost Species at the artist-run-initiative Articulate project space, Leichhardt, NSW, 2019; Sonic Pressure, a drawing and sound installation exhibited at Blue Mountains Cultural Centre in 2020, the result of a collaborative artist residency with Sue Pedley at the Bundanon Trust in 2016 and the centre is everwhere, 360 degree/VR video and sound collaboration with Fiona Kemp exhibited during ARC Artsweek, University of NSW, 2019. This work came out of an artist residency in October 2018 on Kotlin Island, hosted by National Centre for Contemporary Arts, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Her other artist residencies include Hill End Artist Residency; Power Studio at Cite des Arts Internationale, Paris; and Asialink visual artist residencies in Thailand and the Philippines. Her artwork is collected by multiple academic institutions as well as institutions including, the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; Sydney Opera House Trust Collection; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Historic Houses Trust, Sydney.

In 1999, Virginia collaborated with Varsha Nair for Womanifesto II: The Second International Women’s Art Exchange with the film installation Your Hand Opens and Closes and Opens and Closes. In 2003, she returned to Womanifesto with the artwork Body Fluid as part of the publishing project Procreation/ Postcreation. In 2023 she will be restaging her clay and plasticine-based collaboration Remembering Yellow, as part of The Womanifesto Way, integrating a 360 degree video/virtual reality component entitled Memory Cloud.