In Sexy and dangerous 1996, Brook Andrew has recontextualised an historical photograph of an Aboriginal man from the Barron River region of far north Queensland. The photograph, likely made as an ethnographic curiosity, has been transformed into an image with radically different connotations from its original context.

The Chinese characters displayed on the man’s chest like a breastplate resemble tattoos. They translate as ‘ancient tempting woman’ in Mandarin and, interestingly, ‘old irritating woman’ in Japanese. Beneath the characters are English words: ‘SEXY AND DANGEROUS’. These phrases refer, perhaps, to the sexualisation of black men and women – and the feminisation of Indigenous men – in the colonial imaginary. Read one way, Andrew exposes in the image an unacceptable cultural parameter of desire and sexuality. At the same time, seen through a queer lens, this polymorphous portrayal can be read as a positive aspect of the artist’s own identity.