Portrait of Aboriginal youth

Portrait of the head of a young boy.

Vykopal created this work on a residency with the Army Aboriginal Community Assistance Program (AACAP) in the Tiwi Islands. Based with Australian Army for several weeks, he documented the activities of Army Engineers as they worked to provide infrastructure to Australia's remotely-based Indigenous communities.

The AACAP was initially set up in 1997 as a co-operative between government and the Australian Defence Force to provide much needed resources to remote Indigenous communities. It was later absorbed into the Northern Territory National Emergency Response (NTNER) also known as "the intervention", a government response to address claims of child sexual abuse and neglect in Northern Territory Indigenous communities. The NTNER is still fervently debate by the Australian community. Arguments have questioned the underlying motives of the government-led initiative, as well as the programme's effectiveness in dealing with the sexual abuse allegations.