I’m The Captain Now

The deconstruction of First Nation people’s connection to land, spirit and dreaming, are carefully constructed in Australia’s socio-political landscape.

I’m The Captain Now re-authors personal histories – melding them with inherited familial archival imagery to provide an alternative paradigm by which to view and understand the complexities of conversations concerning faith, spirituality and social justice from an Indigenous perspective. These newly constructed visual narratives offer audiences the opportunity to critically interrogate and understand the multi-layered reality of growing-up Aboriginal in a contemporary urban culture, during the implementation of The Policy of Assimilation, the Integration Policy, and the Australian 1967 Referendum change.

It is through this that I’m The Captain Now provokes questions such as; “What if Aboriginal culture was not suppressed through the forced practices of Westernised religion? What would life look like for modern-day Aboriginal people had their cultural practices, spirituality, and dreamings been respected during Australia’s colonisation? And, what would Aboriginal culture look like if Aboriginal people had been controlling the European settlement throughout Australia?”

Each of the seven images within the series explores a combination of fictitious and honest narratives that parade playful references to assimilation through forced religious participation and western instruction.