In Sydney and Canberra, she photographed curator Hetti Perkins and her artist daughter Thea, museum curator Emily McDaniel, visual artist Leanne Tobin, Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Council’s Ann Weldon and La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council’s Noeleen Timbrey, curator Kyra Kum Sing and musician Marlene Cummins.

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Croft’s subjects are photographed close up, some with eyes closed in contemplation, gazing skyward or off to the middle distance.

Historical records depict Barangaroo as a difficult, feisty and even intimidating figure among stories of early contact after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. Bennelong was her second husband. She died shortly after childbirth in 1791 and is believed to be buried within the grounds of the Royal Botanic Gardens.

“She refused to wear clothes, she refused to enter Government House and she refused to have her child in the newly built hospital,” Croft says.

“She snaps Bennelong’s spears, and they are seen having heated arguments, supposedly due to his close relationship with [Governor] Phillip, and she chastises the over-taking of resources, challenging the idea that the colonisers can take as much fish as they want.

“She is always pushing back. I’m not going to put a feminist lens on that time, but she stands her ground, she knows her Country. She is at the interface of irreversible change. She can’t stop it, but she is doing everything she can to make her presence felt and, for me, it was about honouring this person.”

Other portraits in the series, begun by Croft in 2019, have been set to the music of Emma Donovan and will be projected across three days at Old Government House, Parramatta from January 19.

Among the displayed portraits is Croft herself. In July, she departs for Harvard University when she becomes the inaugural First Nations woman – Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra through her father’s people – to take up the prestigious Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair of Australian Studies.

The temporary exhibition has been commissioned by Lendlease and partly funded from the developer’s contribution of $20 million to public art on the site – a condition of its development application. Infrastructure NSW is an exhibition co-funder.