Exhibition combines work to confront injustice and celebrate identity

Uniting two major bodies of work, The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy exhibition is a powerful dual portrait series showing now at Heart Space Copa as part of NAIDOC Week 2025.

Presented by Ripple Narratives, the exhibition combines The Pilbara Portrait Series and The Shaede Project and invites visitors to witness the strength, resilience, and beauty of those organisers say are too often pushed to the margins.

Through deeply human portraiture and immersive storytelling, the show calls on visitors to confront structural injustice, honour cultural sovereignty, and reflect on the legacy being left for the generations to come.

Co-created by Luke Gemmill and Scott Lahiff of Ripple Narratives, and in collaboration with multidisciplinary Blak + Queer artist Dylan “Shaede” Hoskins, the exhibition explores themes of identity, survival, and truth-telling.

“This work is about more than sharing images, it’s about starting a conversation,” Palawa man and co-founder of Ripple Narratives Gemmill said.

“Whether it’s children in the Pilbara growing up without access to safe housing or Shaede standing in full sovereignty, these portraits ask us to meet each subject on equal ground and reckon with what justice really looks like.”

The Pilbara Portrait Series was shot across a 12-day journey through the remote communities of Western Australia, offering an unflinching look at life in regions marked by both hardship and extraordinary resilience.

Children play barefoot in the red dust, families gather tight, elders stand with quiet authority.

The organisers said the images were not designed to inspire pity – they are a call for visibility, for equity, and for action.

“What we found was spirit, strength, and joy,” co-creator Scott Lahiff said.

“But also injustice, overcrowding, preventable disease.

“A system failing its people.

“These portraits are our response, to show what’s real and make sure it’s not ignored.”

In stark and unapologetic contrast, The Shaede Project places Blak + Queer identity front and centre.

These large-scale, richly textured portraits explore the intersections of gender, resistance, cultural sovereignty, and personal power.

Described as tender and defiant, the work reclaims space for identities often erased, offering not performance but presence.

“Shaede is not performing for the gaze,” Gemmill said.

“They are watching us.

“These images demand that we see Blak + Queer lives as they are: radiant, sovereign, complex.”

The exhibition transforms the Copacabana gallery into an embodied experience.

Grounding elements like red desert sand invite viewers to stand barefoot on Country in an act of quiet solidarity.

Organisers said it was not a space for passive viewing, but a a space for truth-telling, for reflection and for responsibility.

Ripple Narratives is a visual storytelling agency founded by Gemmill and Lahiff, dedicated to culturally grounded, community-led narrative work.

Dylan “Shaede” Hoskins is a Dunghutti, Bundjalung, and Gumbaynggirr artist and activist whose multidisciplinary work sits at the intersection of culture, queerness, and reclamation.

The exhibition runs daily until July 13 with free entry and no booking required.

Heart Space Copa is at 206 Del Monte Pl, Copacabana.