In Until the Tides Take Me Home, emerging lens-based artist Peta Duncan invites us into an intimate and deeply moving meditation on identity, connection to Country, and the enduring pull of ancestral homelands. Opening on Saturday 12th April, this exhibition is a powerful culmination of Duncan’s recent return to Mer (Murray Island) in the Torres Strait—her ancestral island and spiritual home.
This exhibition is a collaboration between Agency Projects and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, presented at Agency Projects in the heart of Collingwood.
From the moment she and her cousins stepped off the plane, the journey was one of reconnection and remembrance. “My Aunty was crying,” Duncan recalls, “we were finally home.” In the village of Las, she sat with her Ama, listening as her grandmother explained the ancient names of the tides—those sacred currents that carry stories, knowledge, and people across generations. “One day,” Ama told her, “they will bring us all back home again.”
It is from this place of profound cultural resonance that Until the Tides Take Me Home was born. The exhibition is not only a documentation of Duncan’s return—it is a visual poem to her lineage, her community, and the land that holds her spirit. Through her lens, the viewer is invited to experience the tension and beauty of what it means to be simultaneously rooted in one place and living in another.
“How do I hold a place,” she asks, “when a place holds all the roots of my being?”
“How do I exist somewhere else, when all that I am is back there?”
Duncan’s practice is shaped by a rich sense of responsibility and reverence. Entirely self-taught, she uses contemporary photographic techniques to explore familial relationships and cultural continuity. Her work is not only a testament to her identity as a Torres Strait Islander woman, but a love letter to her people—those living, those passed, and those yet to come.
As a space, Until the Tides Take Me Home is both personal and universal. It speaks to those who have left and long to return, and to anyone who has ever felt the deep ache of cultural dislocation. With each image, Duncan calls us back—to land, to water, to memory, and to home.
Exhibition Opening
Saturday 12th April, 3–5pm
RSVP to info@agencyprojects.org by Wednesday 9th April
Exhibition Details
12th April – 10th May
Open Wednesday–Saturday, 12pm–5pm or by appointment
Please note: the gallery will be closed on Good Friday, Easter Saturday, and ANZAC Day.
Gallery: Agency Projects, 47 Easey St, Collingwood, Melbourne
