Dylan Mooney's multi-disciplinary practice is a personal and moving tribute to the heroism of Australian Indigenous and South Sea Islander peoples whose lives, cultures, and identity were stripped from them or inexorably changed as a result of colonisation.
Presented at Cairns Art Gallery, A Story of My People delivers a powerful history lesson about what Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples have experienced since colonisation. The exhibition presents a new body of commissioned works, including two large multi-panel charcoal portraits of Aboriginal people who were forcibly moved off their country in the Mackay region.
While the portraits reference archival images, they exude a reverence and awe that pays homage to these survivors of a displaced generation.
A second work, My Ailan Home, references the lives of the artist’s grandmother and great grandmother who lived in the Solomon Islands. Like so many they were kidnapped (‘black birded’) in the 1860s and taken to Queensland to work on sugar and cotton plantations. Few were ever able to return to their island homes.
A third commissioned work, Still Here & Thriving, comprises backlit digital images overlaid with sharply articulated and brightly coloured words that engage the audience in a dialogue about ‘how we are viewed’ and ‘are we more than our history?’ Together these works seem to burn with intensity as the artist questions ‘the resilience, innovation and empowerment required of our people to not only survive but to thrive in so-called Australia’.
