Eora/Anaiwan artist Dr Peter McKenzie is not easy to define. His artistic range is vast: paintings, drawings, photography, pottery, jewellery design, printmaking, leathercraft, music, handcrafted guitars, lyrics and poetry.

In 1993, he established the Yanada Collection of silver jewellery. He was inspired by the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples to start the collection, and with it brought Aboriginal design into the sphere of contemporary fine craft. In 2023, he collaborated with artist Jonathan Jones on the ‘Gum Leaf’ image pavers at the Prince of Wales Hospital.

Peter, aged 81, commenced an Elder-in-residence program at La Perouse Museum in September 2025. The program provides studio space for Elders to pursue independent creative projects, while contributing to exhibitions, programs and the community-led perspectives that keep the Museum grounded.

For Peter, it is a homecoming with purpose; a chance to preserve a remarkable body of work for generations to come.

A significant focus of the residency will be the digitisation of his works. His archive spans more than six decades of creative output, much of it rooted in or reflective of the La Perouse community.

Peter was born in November 1944, a third or fourth generation Aboriginal person from the La Perouse community; his mother is of the Eora people, and his father of the Anaiwan people of the New England Tablelands. His mother came from the Simms family, one of the founding families at La Perouse. In his own words, the place shaped everything.

“I was on a bus once travelling over the top end of the United States into Canada and I suddenly had a realisation that home is way down there, underneath the world,” he explains. “I suddenly felt seriously homesick because wherever I've been, La Pa is home.”

With a lifetime of connection to La Perouse, his presence in the museum has already delivered more than just an artistic journey.

"You could give Peter many titles,” says Greg Davis, Council’s Venue Assistant at La Perouse Museum. “Historian in residence would certainly be one.”

“If a boomerang comes in, he can identify the design, trace it to a maker, connect it to a family, place it in time. He's able to give so many of the objects here at La Perouse Museum an Indigenous perspective, a story behind them that puts them in their place. That's invaluable knowledge. It renders a real authenticity to what we're trying to do here."

Peter began work as a graphic artist in 1961 while studying part time at East Sydney Technical College. His creative life grew steadily outward into music, design, photography, printmaking and fine art. Meanwhile, his professional life moved through some of Australia’s most significant cultural institutions.

In 1982, he received a Commonwealth Department of Education Aboriginal Overseas Study Award, which took him to Clark University in Massachusetts, where photography became a central passion. Returning to Australia, he worked at the Powerhouse Museum and Museums Australia before participating in the landmark After 200 Years photography project in 1987, working meaningfully with his own community at La Perouse.

In 1989, he represented the Australian Government at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, curating an international Aboriginal art presentation for the major exhibition, Magiciens de la Terre, which formed part of the French Bicentenary celebrations.

Back home, he curated What is Aboriginal Art? as part of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Festival of the Dreaming; served as chairperson of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative and designed the national logo for the label of authenticity protecting Aboriginal cultural copyrights.

He completed a Master of Fine Arts at UNSW in 1993, was appointed the inaugural Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Fulbright Scholar, and in 2010 was awarded his PhD in Creative Arts from the University of Western Sydney.

Peter says curiosity drives his artistic practice down so many different paths. “Everything you see on my resume is because I was curious about it,” he says. “I wanted to find out more, to do it for some reason. And I’ve always had this ability to adapt, whether it's adapt artistically or adapt technically; I think I'm lucky.”

Peter’s studio at La Perouse Museum is full of photographs, etchings, sketches, guitars, portfolios and more, leaving not a lot of room to move. Yet it’s still only a sample of his output from a vast career.

He flicks through stunning black and white prints of local Indigenous footballers and vibrant, colourful images of traditional ground painting, of which he explains is a precursor to dot painting that only came into prominence in the 1970s.

There is some trepidation, but also excitement as he approaches the enormous task of digitising his works and preparing for his retrospective exhibition. “I'm chuffed to do it,” he says. “It’s only the second time I've had an exhibition. I called the first one: At Last The Peter Mac Show!”

This text appears in an edited form, first appearing on the Randwick City Council website, 15 June 2026. Link here.