Item HT 56467 Bowtie - Purple Velvet Clip-On, Lindsay Motherwell, circa 1980s

Summary

Purple velvet clip-on bowtie, owned by Lindsay Motherwell. Lindsay was quite a fashionable dresser and worked in a menswear store briefly.

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.

Physical Description

Purple velvet clip-on bow tie. It is quite large, with drooping bottom corners. On the back are two plastic 'wings' with which to clip it onto a shirt.

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.