Destiny Deacon constructs her photographs with deeply personal and symbolic props, such as black dolls and kitschy objects, often taken directly from her home. Her signature recipe – combining childhood innocence and real-world violence – allows us to consider important sociological concerns that disproportionately affect Indigenous people, and which are often lost behind closed doors.

Her precise, intelligent re-contextualising and re-reading of these objects is the strength of her work. Deacon’s humour, wit and clowning – shown both in her persona and in her art – mask serious personal and historical traumas that are experienced universally. The images in the series ‘Forced into images’ are conceptualised as chapters in a girl’s life; in ‘Freefall’, a beautiful baby is born and nursed by her mother.

Being there 1998 depicts two black dolls placed before a backdrop reminiscent of a gutter or curb in a dirty city street. They stare outwards as if watching passersby, unsupervised and vulnerable to the world around them. Beside them is an open matchbox, with unlit matches scattered about on the concrete floor – suggesting the presence of danger or, perhaps, a metaphorical ‘burning issue’. Chaotically situated yet ambiguous, the elements allow the viewer to speculate on the real story playing out.