Dylan Mooney's multi-media works are a personal and moving tribute to the heroism of Australian Indigenous and south sea islander peoples whose lives, cultures and identity were stripped from them or inexorably changed as a result of colonisation.

Born in 1995, Mooney is a Yuwi man from Mackay, Queensland with cultural connections to Darnley Island in the Torres Strait, and the South Sea Islands.

A Story of My People comprises several new works commissioned by the Cairns Art Gallery, including a large wall installation of portraits of Aboriginal people who were forcibly moved off their country in the Mackay region. While the portraits are based on archival images, they are presented with a reverence and awe that pays homage to these survivors of a displaced generation.

A second work, My Ailan Home, references the lives of the artist’s grandmother and great grandmother who lived in the Solomon Islands. Like so many they were kidnapped (‘black birded’) in the 1860s and taken to Queensland to work on sugar and cotton plantations. Few were ever able to return to their island homes.

A third commissioned work, Still Here & Thriving, comprises backlit digital images overlaid with sharply articulated and brightly coloured words that engage the audience in a dialogue about ‘how we are viewed’ and ‘are we more than our history?’ Together these works seem to burn with intensity as the artist questions ‘the resilience, innovation and empowerment required of our people to not only survive but to thrive in so-called Australia’.

In the supporting exhibition brochure, Dr ​Chelsea Watego points out that, 'when Mooney speaks of "my people" he is not speaking of self in the possessive individualised sense, but of shared experiences of oppression and resistance of Indigenous peoples in a collective sense, from the mainland to the Torres Strait and to the South Pacific.'