Look Intruder confronts the volatility of Australian national identity, a concept fraught with contradictions, where symbols and narratives of colonial triumph mask harsh realities. The flag’s southern cross and union jack are to be found everywhere, floating above, haunting and hanging. “Australian is a false concept, a made up thing,” opines Yuin activist and community worker Keiran Stewart-Assheton in a monologue cut throughout the work, continuing, “Why would you want to be Australian?”

Footage of parasitic architecture, unending roads, and distorted gumtrees wipe past the screen, overlaid together to form a ghostly glow of destruction and loss. In conversation with the artist, Larrakia climatologist Jackson Browne details the ongoing damage of colonialism to Country and community. The hope of ecosystem regeneration is weighed against the real possibility that ‘the climate might not be suitable by the time these trees are in maturity.’

Questions protrude out from the work, inviting the audience into a space of uncertainty, doubt, and the fleeting chance for renewal. A space of conversation, where the loss of cultural practices like corroboree can be acknowledged, even if it cannot be performed as it once could... Enduring the psychic onslaught of colonialism as an artist of Murri and mixed European descent, Palmer turns to the work as a mode of therapy, a way to express, and tell story beyond linear time. The artist’s own voice and image are included, glancing back self-reflexively from within the car as she travels through Country.

The audio consists of field recording collected through Gunditjmara, Woi Wurrung, Bunurong/Boonwurrung, Djab Wurrung, Wadawurrung, Taungurung and Dhudhuroa Countries, during Palmer’s creative residency with the public records office of Victoria. Music samples taken from The Settlers’ Sing Songs of the Snowy Mountains (1966).