Peter Waples-Crowe

Peter Waples-Crowe is a Ngarigo visual and performance-based artist living in Melbourne. His intersecting experiences as an Aboriginal person and his work with community health and arts organisations give him a unique perspective as an artist and community cultural development worker. Waples-Crowe creates bold colourful work that explores the representation of Aboriginal people in popular culture, often referencing the dingo as a totemic figure and an analogy for Indigenous peoples.

Peter has been a multiple finalist for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, the Victorian Indigenous Art award, and received the three major awards in its ten year history. In addition to a successful solo career, Peter is notable for his collaborations with other artists; performing with Anna Leibzeit and Kaz Adams as post-punk apocalyptic disco group The Treaters since 2012. Recently he has undertaken collaborative works with non-Aboriginal artists, including Katie Jacobs and Ingrid Tufts for Dingo Spirit, which was a finalist in the 2017 Craft Victoria Awards. More recently his collaboration with textile artist Megan Evans has produced an exhibition 'Squatters and Savages' for the Ballarat Regional Art Gallery. Peter’s work is an elaboration of a previous work 'Just Sayin' which consisted of a reworking of the colonial images from the galleries print collection; diffracting the colonisers view of Aboriginal people with the mercurial wit of the constantly shifting negotiations of queer and black identities.

Peter’s intersecting experiences as an Aboriginal queer man and his work with community health and community arts organisations such as Thorne Harbour Health, The Torch and VACCHO has given him a unique perspective as a practicing artist and community cultural development worker.