At the age of 80, pioneering artist William Yang offers this wisdom: just keep going.
The Queensland-born artist has done just that since the 1970s, using his camera lens to record candid images of his life and the queer and Asian-Australian communities he is part of.
Yang is best known for documenting Sydney's gay scene, from before the city's first Mardi Gras in 1978 to the HIV epidemic of the 1980s, and more recently the gay marriage plebiscite in 2017.
After starting out as a playwright, in 1989 he began performing monologues accompanied by projections of his photos - a unique form of theatre which Yang has since toured around the world.
The latest of these storytelling-with-pictures events is titled Milestone, and it will also be accompanied by an original score from composer Elena Kats-Chernin.
Milestone will premiere as part of the 2025 Sydney Festival at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in January, followed by a one-off performance for the upcoming Asia-Pacific performance triennial in Melbourne, Asia TOPA.
Yang will perform for his biggest audience yet at Asia TOPA, which is returning after a five year hiatus.
The audience capacity for Milestone at Hamer Hall is about 2500 but the understated Yang says he's quietly confident about the crowd.
"I've never played to that many people, but I guess I've got a microphone, and I've seen monologues in quite large places ... It's just a case of holding your nerve," he told AAP.
Yang's Chinese-Australian heritage is one of Milestone's major themes. It wasn't until the artist was in his mid-thirties that he embraced his Chinese background.
"My mother wanted us to be more Australian than the Australians, so that the Chinese side of us growing up in Australia, was denied and unacknowledged," he said.
Milestone will show off about 600 images out of more than one million Yang has taken over the decades.
He is working through the massive job of scanning his old negatives, and having worked through his archives from the 1970s, he's up to his most prolific period during the 1980s.
While he doesn't take so many photographs these days, Yang is comforted to know there is still demand for his pictures.
"I felt that at the beginning, when I first started to show gay photographs, that even institutions were a bit scared," he said.
"I suppose there's more acceptance now of LGBTIQ or whatever the letters are."
Also featured on the Asia TOPA slate is the international dance and music collaboration U>N>I>T>E>D, which sees dancers in motocross-inspired exoskeleton outfits explore spirituality in the technological age.
Dance company Chunky Move has worked with Javanese techno outfit Gabber Modus Operandi and animatronics designers Creature Technology Co to develop the outlandish piece.
William Yang: Milestone is on at Sydney's Roslyn Packer Theatre January 10 and 11, 2025 then the opening night of Asia TOPA February 20 at Hamer Hall.
