Transcript
You know, I see my Aboriginalness and queerness all wrapped in my spirit.
My name's Peter Waples-Crowe. I'm Ngarigo. I'm a multidisciplinary artist and for this show, How I See It, I've done a new work called Ngaya, which means ‘I Am’ and it's really like a self portrait in the broadest sense.
It's about me living not on my Country, but looking at my Country from Naarm and talking about the power of Country, the erasure of Country, colonial violence, things that are impacting Country. I collaborated with Rhian Hinkley and composer Harry Covill.
I'm known for collaborating with other artists in the past and I think it's taken my practice in new directions.
I guess I want to make people think about what the high country means. I think people don't think of the snow people as well, so I want to highlight that.
I wanted to illuminate what's happening in that Country. We are presented with this colonial image and underneath it there's a lot of other history.
In one part of the film, we sing the Snow Song, which is a ceremonial song which hasn't been heard on Country for a long time. It's really mixed, you know, the emotions in this film. The juxtaposition of the imagery, you know, can create humor in itself. There's queer humor, there's Aboriginal humor.
I think my work is about making people think, disarming them with humor but really it's quite a serious thing I'm trying to say.
Subverting colonial imagery, yeah, and putting it back in the hands of us mob. It's been a year of reckoning this year for myself and processing it again, I think this film is a great way to end the year for me and I'm really excited for people to see it.