TRUE COLOURS
From Instagram to huge public murals, Indigenous identity, resilience and love are just a few of the colours in Dylan Mooney’s palette, reports Mike Hitch.
From Instagram to huge public murals, Indigenous identity, resilience and love are just a few of the colours in artist Dylan Mooney’s palette.
I use a range of colours to reinforce positivity. White, reds, browns and ochres… and the rainbow represents the queer side…
Dylan Mooney’s artworks are rich, empowering, tapestries of personal and cultural experience. Folds of colour and texture meld Indigenous artwork styles with sublime queer overtones, joyfully hitting the pleasure centres of the eye.
Art is his preferred medium, though.
“I’m not the best at doing interviews… not good with pressure in the moment,” he warns DNA, speaking a socially distant 900km away in Brisbane.
Dylan, 24, identifies as a queer Yuibera man from Mackay in Central Queensland and a Torres Strait Islander man from Badu and Darnley Islands. Many of his personal works show the pride rainbow flag dancing across the collars and sleeves of embracing Indigenous men. Other pieces draw on political motifs and family history, and themes of institutionalised racism and the mistreatment of the land.
“When I touch on queer or Indigenous identities in my work, I put myself into it,” he says. “What it was like for me growing up, and my experiences identifying as queer are normally present.
“I struggled with my identity growing up. When I hit university, I knew I was gay. I came out to my family and they were supportive, so it was a really positive outcome for me. Because of that, being proud of who I am and where I come from is important. I want to bring that positive reality back to the LGBT community through the people I draw.”
When it comes to creating public works, like the murals he is commissioned to complete, Dylan draws on his own history and a process of community consultation to find the stories that resonate.
“Anything people want to share about their life and history is incorporated. I get my inspiration from my family, my friends and the stories of my community, but when I go out and create a work, I listen to other people’s stories and what they have to tell. Their history, their lives – it all goes into the work.”
The experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples aren’t always something to celebrate, but Dylan resists sombre image making. Instead, he favours optimism. It may be highly charged, socio-political art but, he says, he prefers his work to depict the successes of the communities he represents.
“I want to show the other side… the resilience of our people. I want to show how far we’ve come.”
Another feature of Dylan’s work is the inclusion of heavily symbolic artefacts – boomerangs, handcuffs and crucifixes, while painted faces and native Australian animals also recur.
In one notable example, an Indigenous man is shackled by the Australian flag as he prays to a glowing crucifix. The piece is captioned, “The people who gave us Jesus, gave us chains.”
Unbroken eye contact with the viewer is another striking and recurring visual trope. In some images it gives his figures a warm, friendly aura, inviting our gaze. In others, the figures stare back as if to say, “I see you… don’t look away.” The effect is as intimate, but more challenging.
“I want people to focus on the pieces and work out the stories behind them. It’s an interaction between the viewer and the artwork. Having the artwork stare back at you gives the sense that you’re looking at real people,” he says.
Indeed, this element gives us, the viewer, the chance to view the people depicted as intrinsically real and as embodiments of a