Lens-based artist Peta Duncan joins Vanessa Morris on Banksia to talk about We Built a House Out of Water.

We Built a House Out of Water presents a new body of work created through lens-based image-making, layered material experimentation and creating an expressive intimate space that mirrors an internal landscape. Shaped by culture, family and memory, through the ongoing process of healing.

Peta spoke about developing the works through materials, such as a the photographic printing process to metaphors such as the healing power or water and the ocean, and how the name We Built a House Out of Water stems from childhood memories and connects to one of the key themes of play.

As well as how the complex role of Christianity within Torres Strait communities sits at the centre — understood simultaneously as a source of care, protection, and belonging, and as an ongoing colonial force. Rather than offering resolution, it sits within these contradictions, tracing how inherited belief systems are carried through families and reshaped across generations.

Peta also spoke about previous exhibition Until The Tides Take Me Home connecting to visiting her ancestral island of Mer in the Torres Strait and short film BAKIAMU which recognise the shifts in weather patterns and how this has a chain reaction effect disrupting ecological systems and cultural knowledge.

This exhibition is presented in partnerships with Blak Dot Gallery and Centre for Contemporary photography.

Learn more about Peta's work here

We Built A House Out Of Water is Blak Dot from 6 - 28 June

BAKIAMU is screening Brunswick Picture House with a Q&A on 8 July from 2 - 4pm