One of Australia’s most renowned artists, Queensland-born, Sydney-based Tracey Moffatt represented Australia at the 2017 Venice Biennale with the exhibition ‘MY HORIZON’ in the national pavilion. The white ghosts sailed in 2017 was presented in the exhibition alongside another video work, Vigil 2017, and two bodies of photographic works. The two videos grapple with different moments in Australia’s history when people arrived on the continent’s shore by boat.

The white ghosts sailed in is a speculative artwork that the artist claims to have ‘discovered’ in a former Aboriginal mission at the centre of Sydney.¹ The artist describes the film as having been made by Australian Indigenous people on 26 January 1788, capturing views of Sydney Harbour. She proposes that the celluloid film was made from melted-down pig hooves and that the camera originally belonged to botanist Sir Joseph Banks. The video is made to appear like an old film with scratches and burns; at times the simulated decay completely obliterates the image. The soundtrack features marching drums and crying babies, implying that the British invasion is taking place off screen. With this hypothetical historical document, Moffatt asks viewers to imagine what it was like for Indigenous Australians on the day that the British violently laid claim to their land. 

Referencing a highly emotive event in Australia’s history in The white ghosts sailed in, Moffatt asks how art can do justice to history and compel concrete change in the present. 

Endnotes

1. Australia Council for the Arts, ‘Australian Pavilion to Present Tracey Moffatt’s Solo Exhibition My Horizon’ [media release], 10 May 2017, viewed 30 July 2024.