Drew Pettifer A sorrowful act: the wreck of the Zeewijk
‘The title comes from the Dutch Australian queer activist Peter de Waal’s translation of the Zeewijk’s journal, which describes the young men as having “committed the sorrowful and Godforsaken act of Sodom and Gomorrah”,’ Drew Pettifer explains about ‘A sorrowful act’.
The exhibition delves into Australia’s first recorded moment of European queer history: a 1727 sodomy trial that followed the wreck of the Dutch ship Zeewijk at Houtman Abrolhos, an island chain off the coast of Western Australia (WA). ‘To me, the truly sorrowful act was the execution of these young men,’ he says, ‘with the added pathos of them being executed by marooning by being left on separate islands, so close, yet so far away in their final moments.’
Pettifer is a Victorian-based artist who also trained as a lawyer and teaches art history — facets of his professional
