Studio Guide / Lesson 7 · History + position
Two positions
Learning outcomeCompare how two artists respond to a shared history from different cultural positions, and identify the position you bring to interpretation.
What students need to know
Key learning points
- Artists can respond to a shared history from different cultural positions.
- Cultural position can shape what an artist chooses to represent, the decisions they make and the responsibilities they bring to their practice.
- Artist voice and authoritative sources help establish the position from which an artist is speaking.
- Collaboration can involve shared inquiry while artists retain different positions, knowledge and ways of making.
- Comparative interpretation connects artwork evidence, context, artist practice and sources.
Key terms
- POSITION
- CULTURAL POSITION
- ARTIST VOICE
- REPRESENTATION
- COLLABORATION
- EVIDENCE
01 /Start from your position
Bring one of your developed
marks forward.
Use one mark developed through earlier lessons. Place it in your visual diary and write beside it:
- Where did this come from?
- What relationship do you have to it?
- What knowledge comes from your own experience?
- What knowledge comes from another person or source?
Keep this brief. The purpose is to make your own position visible before you study the artists.
Keep in your visual diaryMark + position note
Visual material: Studio work, 2026.
02 /Encounter the project
Two artists / one exhibition
Squatters and Savages was presented at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 2017. Peter Waples-Crowe invited megan evans to work with him in response to the gallery's colonial collection of nineteenth-century images. Across two years they researched their own family histories, travelled together to Ngarigo Country and to places connected with Evans's settler ancestry, then developed artworks individually while collaborating on the ideas behind the exhibition.
Two works to study
What earlier image is being reworked here, and from what position?
What has been done to a familiar object, and what does that make visible?
Look closely
- What has each artist chosen to show?
- What has each artist changed, reworked or disrupted?
- What materials, images or objects can you identify?
- How has each work been presented?
- What does the presentation make the viewer notice?
- Where can you see evidence of the artist's position in these choices?
Keep in your visual diaryArtwork evidence from both artists
Making + presenting
The artists respond to the same colonial history through different practices.
megan evans
Evans works with objects and materials connected with colonial domestic life, altering familiar things so their histories become visible in new ways.
- What happens when a familiar object is altered?
- Why might the original object matter to the meaning of the work?
- How does presenting the altered object in a gallery affect how we read it?
Peter Waples-Crowe
Waples-Crowe reworks colonial representations from a Ngarigo position, using contemporary art practice to challenge who has historically controlled images of Aboriginal people, Country and history.
- What earlier representation is being responded to?
- What has Waples-Crowe changed or disrupted?
- How does that change affect who controls the story?
Keep in your visual diaryMaking + presenting note
03 /Hear the artist
History + position
Peter Waples-Crowe is a Ngarigo artist. megan evans is a settler artist. In Squatters and Savages they engage with colonial history from different cultural positions. Their relationship to that history affects the stories they tell, the choices they make and the responsibilities they bring to the project.
Look back
Waples-Crowe later reworks this colonial representation of Ngarigo Country in Ngaya (I Am).
What changes when the same place is represented from a different cultural position?
What becomes clearer when you hear the artist speak?
Keep in your visual diaryArtist voice / context note
04 /Two positions
What is shared, and what remains different?
Peter Waples-Crowe and megan evans worked within the same exhibition while bringing different histories, cultural positions and responsibilities to the project.
Return to Colonised 3 and Bleeding Chandelier.
- What issue are both artists responding to?
- What visual or material decisions are specific to each artist?
- How does each artist's position affect those decisions?
- What appears to have been developed collaboratively?
- What remains individual?
- How does the exhibition bring the two positions into relationship without making them the same?
Cultural Lens / who is speaking?
- Who is the artist?
- What is their relationship to this history?
- What knowledge or experience do they bring?
- How does that position affect the choices they make?
Evidence
Choose one specific example from each artwork and one piece of contextual evidence from a source.
Look together
Share your comparison with another student.
- Notice
- What is clear in the comparison?
- Evidence
- Where is the interpretation supported by artwork or source evidence?
- Question
- What needs further explanation or evidence?
Revise one part of your interpretation after the conversation if the feedback helps you see something more clearly.
Keep in your visual diaryComparison of position + collaboration · One revised interpretation
By the end of this lesson
- A mark + position note
- Artwork evidence from both artists
- A making + presenting note
- An artist voice / context note
- A comparison of position + collaboration, with one revised interpretation
References
Source note
This Studio Guide was developed for Learning by Design using VCE Art Creative Practice curriculum guidance, artist and exhibition material relating to Peter Waples-Crowe and megan evans, public museum material and original Studio material. Linked Studio Building Blocks, Interpretive Lenses and Creative Thinking Toolkit pages carry their own source notes and references.
Curriculum + reading
Greenwood, D. (2023). Art creative practice: VCE units 1–4. Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (n.d.). VCE Art Creative Practice: Teaching and learning. VCAA Teaching and learning ↗
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2022). VCE Art Creative Practice study design 2023–2027. VCAA Art Creative Practice ↗
Artists + artworks
evans, m. (n.d.). Squatters and Savages. megan evans / Squatters and Savages ↗
von Guérard, E. (1863). North-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko [Oil on canvas]. National Gallery of Australia. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons ↗
Museum + gallery sources
Australian Centre for the Moving Image. (n.d.). Peter Waples-Crowe / Ngaya (I Am). ACMI / Peter Waples-Crowe ↗
National Gallery of Victoria. (n.d.). Peter Waples-Crowe / Melbourne Now. NGV / Peter Waples-Crowe ↗
Waples-Crowe, P., & evans, m. (2017). Squatters and Savages [Exhibition catalogue]. Art Gallery of Ballarat. Exhibition catalogue / Squatters and Savages ↗
Studio material
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MARKS. Visual material: Studio work, 2026.