2025 - Diary of a City Blak by Luke Currie-Richardson - Yellamundie Festival

Diary of a City Blak

Diary of a City Blak is a multidisciplinary performance that weaves together dance, poetry, acting, and visual storytelling through photography and video. Performed in a circular format with the audience surrounding the space, the performer never leaves the stage, a constant unrelenting presence navigating identity, visibility, and resistance.

The work is a raw poetic unpacking of what it means to grow up Blackfulla in the city, disconnected from traditional community yet burdened with the pressure to prove your Indigeneity. In the “crabs in a bucket” scene, the performer wrestles with the sting of lateral violence, being told they’re “not a real Black” for not growing up on Country while constantly being made “too Black” in white spaces. It is a fight for belonging on all sides.

Subliminal and familiar sounds from racist Australia pulse throughout the work, distorted Centrelink hold music, political speeches, echoes of white Australian anthems, embedding the structural violence into the atmosphere itself.

Social media becomes both a mirror and battleground, a place where identity is claimed and curated, but also where mob authenticity is policed and pain becomes content.

Black deaths in custody are acknowledged not through exposition but through absence, empty chairs, flashes of mugshots, sirens, and silences that throb louder than words.

Luke Currie-Richardson

A proud descendant of the Kuku Yalanji, Djabugay, Mununjali, Butchulla, and Meriam peoples, has dedicated over 14 years to sharing powerful Indigenous stories through dance, film, photography, spoken word, and fashion. Touring with Bangarra Dance Theatre and Marrugeku, he’s collaborated with artists like Ghenoa Gela and Wesley Enoch. In 2023, Luke debuted his choreography GEDOVAIT in the Stephanie Lake Escalator program. His photography, featured in Vogue and Marie Claire, won the People’s Choice Award in the 2024 National Photographic Portrait Prize. In 2022, he made his theatre acting debut in Kalanga Atu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. As a poet, his work has been showcased at Sydney Festival’s The Vigil and published by Red Room Poetry. Through his multidisciplinary practice, Luke amplifies Indigenous culture, challenging perceptions of identity and belonging in contemporary Australia.