Beneath The Sky 2025: Luke Currie-Richardson
Videography by James Henry
This performance was a part of Beneath the Sky: Resist. Reveal. Reclaim. It was filmed at Peppercorn Lawn along the Birrarung in the heart of Naarm, and was proudly supported by Aboriginal Melbourne at City of Melbourne.
Photography by Tiffany Garvie
‘SOCIAL MEDIOCRE’ by Luke Currie-Richardson
If my posts got as many hits as my culture has taken I’d be insta-famous.
I’d Have a tv show called Keeping Up with the Currie-Richardson, you know that uninteresting show that has people interested type of take. Instead I’m the protagonist in this oppressive system which has me all messed up starring in Prison Break.
If people beat on my
my LIKE button
like police brutally
bash and beat our
beautiful black
bodies blue,
I’d have the most
liked content
this world ever
did view.
We hashtag people⠀
with toe tags ⠀
in body bags ⠀
While a few days later ⠀
society forget leaving ⠀
only the families to⠀now
mourn and be sad.
Our people passing are ⠀
like passing trends.⠀
Having to contend with⠀
fake manufactured lives
drowning in a sea
of heartless content.
Facetuned lies,
A selfie disguise
Unrecognised,
A shriek of
validity cries.
Our graveyards are full of DMs, no not the messages but our Dead Men lost to the system, where our women and children won’t get a chance to slip up next to them ever again.
Now you’re in my DMs tryna get to me,
Asking me, for my lived experience and our history like my knowledge is free
Saying you’re willing to learn but don’t want to pay a teaching fee
Now this is my reality
Society only friend accept us
if we are the good black,
the quiet don’t talk back type of black,
play for their team “he’s my favourite fullback” type of black,
hitting back to back threes type of black
while remote community type of blacks get three in the back what type of shit is that?
They want the David Peacheys, Wirrpoonda, Unaipons and Gulpili’s
but ignore David Dungay Jr.
I bet if he played football
for their favourite team
we might have gotten justice
and you might have know him little sooner!
...I get tagged in endless challenges like life as a black man isn’t challenging enough,
Here’s a challenge for you, walk out the door and see what’s it’s like being stereotyped or racially vilified living black in the white mans eyes.
Trying to Decolonize those history books which are full of lies told by one side totally missing the part where they
brutalised, burglarised, sterilise and generationally traumatise my people.
Instead of lifting up our young
We are lowering our young into early graves
Like youth suicide is a TikTok challenge and all the kids are going along with the craze.
They hit the renegade
As I’m deemed a renegade
Rebellious to a system
That is strangling me
The white see me as an activist
The black see me as a leader
Yet I don’t identify as either
I am me
Navigating the world as a black man! ...
And as we mindlessly ⠀
scroll and double tap, ⠀
prisoners to our screens⠀
my people, ⠀
country and ⠀
culture die,⠀
along with the ⠀
Australian Dream!