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I am a Larrakia person born and raised in Darwin on Larrakia country where I’ve always lived except for periods of education and employment mainly in Sydney and Melbourne. When I was seventeen I travelled through England, Europe and the Middle East and ended up in Kolkata (Calcutta) India where I lived for two years. Upon my return to Australia at 21 years if age, I enrolled at Alexander Mackie Art School and then Sydney College of the Arts for a year. I supported myself part time by doing work such as clothes designing and accessories such as scarves and bush-string jewellery and I returned to Darwin in 1981. I worked as an arts adviser in Katherine for Mimi Aboriginal Arts and Crafts for three years before going to the Australian National University where I graduated with anthropology honours in 1990. Since then I’ve worked as a curator, arts researcher, writer and designer. My recent commissions include the 2001/2002 and 2003/2004 Sydney Harbour Bridge New Year’s Eve Celebrations designs; and designing ‘Gulumbirigin’: Larrakia Memorial, for Darwin City Council Public Art Advisory Committee (for 2005 funding application). I am completing my PhD at Charles Darwin University researching an ethnography of my own people, the Larrakia, and continue working at my own photography art practice. Since 1993 I have been taking portraits of male beauty and body image in India and Nepal and have recently commenced photographic projects with Aboriginal and other Indigenous males in Darwin and the Northern Territory. |
