Item MM 151126 Photograph - Lindsay Motherwell, Faerie Glen, Margate, South Africa, 1952

Summary

Black and white photograph of Lindsay Motherwell wearing a suit and bowtie. It was taken in Faerie Glen, Margate, South Africa in 1952. Lindsay travelled in Rhodesia and South Africa playing music for most of the 1950s and 1964-69.

Sylvia Boyes (a South African-born orphan) and Lindsay Motherwell (a Melbourne-born drummer) met in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967 through their theatre connections. They fell in love but due to apartheid laws were forced to leave South Africa to marry in London. They subsequently relocated permanently to Melbourne in 1970.

Description of Content

Man wearing a suit and bow tie, with moustache.

Physical Description

Black and white photograph

Significance

Statement of Historical Significance:
This collection provides a significant opportunity to represent political and personal freedom as a motivation for migrating to Australia within the international context of both apartheid in South Africa and the end of the White Australia policy in Australia. The personal narrative is well documented and the objects provide a material way to follow the lives of both Lindsay and Sylvia, both separately and where they coincide in South Africa and onwards together to Melbourne. While this is ultimately a love story, it plays out through the collection against the backdrop of apartheid South Africa, sixties London and an increasingly multicultural Australia.