Monument

A film collaboration with award-winning First Nations dancer and choreographer Amrita Hepi, created for her solo exhibition ‘Monument’ at Gertrude Contemporary.

Drawing on Hepi’s exploration of colonial monuments, the film translates the physicality and tension of her performance practice into a cinematic language of movement, landscape and light. ‘Monument’ considers the monument as a fixed symbol of history while questioning its permanence—what happens when these supposedly immovable structures are subjected to memory, time, resistance and change.

The film was created as part of Hepi’s exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary, bringing together contemporary dance, installation and moving image to extend the ideas of the work beyond the gallery.

“Monuments are dialectical. Central pillars that seep into the periphery. Like the horizon line they are steadfast informants of space—stable, grand, expansive and looming. Continuously being built, and yet continuously being rinsed out by retrospective, inertia and rain.”

— Amrita Hepi