Art Gallery of Ballarat Art Screen: Peter Waples-Crowe – Ngaya (I Am)

For Pride Month, the Gallery presents work by Peter Waples-Crowe. A proud Ngarigo man living in Naarm/Melbourne, Waples-Crowe makes art about the intersection of his First Nations and LGBTQI+ identity.

First captured in European eyes by Eugene von Guerard's 1868 painting, North-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko, Ngarigo Country was transformed in the twentieth century by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme.

On top of a camp and humourous grab-bag of art history and archival video, Waples-Crowe inserts his own image as a counter to many decades of Aboriginal erasure from popular narratives of ski slopes and infrastructure.