The Old Masters Moonlite
2024/25
“Blue is for boys, pink is for girls” – this gendered colour coding has uncertain origins, but was firmly in place in Western society by the mid-20th century.
At this time, to demonstrate your taste and sophistication as a middle-class homeowner, you might have decorated your walls with reproductions of Old English Master paintings. A popular and suitably refined choice was Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, or perhaps Thomas Lawrence’s Pinkie. Even better: one of each!
You might have also considered hanging a Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly print to signal your appreciation for modern art, and embrace of a new and distinctively Australian national identity.
How cultured you were!
Old Masters Moonlite blends my fascination with Western art history, queer identity, and the myth-making at the heart of Australiana. The work follows a fictional narrative centred on a whimsically reimagining of Australia’s infamous queer bushranger, Andrew George Scott – better known as Captain Moonlite.
In this chapter of my historical remix, Moonlite pauses his outlaw life to pose for portraits by the English Old Masters (c.1885/1985).
Documentation photography by Emma Byrnes