Kyra Mancktelow: Unconstitutional Love.: N.Smith Gallery

At the heart of Kyra Mancktelow’s new exhibition, Unconstitutional Love, stands a wedding dress: a powerful symbol of union, devotion, and tradition. As a garment imbued with generations of  cultural significance Mancktelow challenges us to look beyond the surface, urging us to consider the deeper histories woven into the fabric of this seemingly familiar form.

As a stark reminder of the enduring legacy of colonial control over First Nations lives, Indigenous Australians could only marry with government permission up until the late 1960s. Through textiles, prints, and sculptural interventions, Mancktelow extends her inquiry into the historical significance of garments in Australia, interrogating how fabric and fashion function as both instruments of oppression and markers of resilience. In Unconstitutional Love, the wedding dress is not merely an object; it is a statement – a reclamation of agency in culture and identity. Carefully adapting traditional materials and techniques, Kyra’s works assert the continuation of Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty, an act of resistance against historical erasure. 

Foregrounding the ways in which colonial policies regulate and redefine Indigenous existence, often under the guise of benevolence. The governmental interference of marriage for Indigenous Australians was not just an administrative act but a mechanism of control, an assertion of power over the most personal aspects of life. Mancktelow’s work compels us to consider the long-lasting emotional and cultural consequences of these policies. How do we remember these histories? How do we acknowledge the strength of those who resisted? How do we ensure that love remains an ungoverned, sovereign force?

Kyra Mancktelow critically deconstructs how colonial law entangles with Indigenous Australian sovereignty in Australian history.Her approach is deeply personal yet universally resonant in its themes of love and the acknowledgement of marital union. Her textiles and prints bear the weight of history, yet draw upon the enduring strength of Indigenous kinship and cultural survival. Unconstitutional Love is an act of remembering and honouring, but also one of transformation: of pain into power, of restriction into reclamation. The exhibition invites us to bear witness to these stories, to reflect on the intersections of history and identity, considering the ways in which past injustices continue to shape the present.

With this work, Mancktelow honours her family, whose experiences of love were constrained by the oppressive structures of colonial governance.