Description:

Spanning 20 years, Liss photographs the Larrakia Country on which their family lives, addressing the inevitable failures of settling stolen land.

“I grew up in a rural district on the tropical fringe of the “northern territory”, Humpty Doo. Haunted by pictures I took as a teenager (some included in the book) I make photographs of the next generation of my family growing up in this place.”

Darkly humorous and intimate, with the surrounding savannah environment, Humpty Doom engages with what it means to represent what will always be Larrakia land.

Humpty Doom, as a book, is in some ways a very straight photobook – big plates, richly reproduced, just the photos with no distractions from the work. But it comes in a disarmingly cheerful get-up. We think of it as a dark photobook dressed in a primary school t-shirt. The artist's deep connection, but equal ambivalence, to this place leant us a way to make a book that is both robust and delicate, serious and humorous.