The Yowie
2017
Medium
Apple Prores 4444 format, silent
Measurements
30min 35sec (looped)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2019
© Dean Cross
Gallery location
Ground Level, NGV International
About this work
Referencing Sidney Nolan’s iconic Ned Kelly paintings, this video work reimagines the Kelly figure as a motionless presence in a camouflage ghillie suit – also known as a yowie suit – standing semi-submerged in a steaming lake. A bark helmet marked with a stripe of white ochre replaces Kelly’s steel mask. The work unfolds slowly: water ripples, reeds rustle and, occasionally, a fish breaks the lake’s surface. Dean Cross, a Worimi artist born on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country, draws on his background in dance and installation to create a work that hovers between video, performance and landscape painting. The piece quietly unsettles Australian mythologies, asking us to look again, more carefully, at the stories we think we know well.