A photographer’s glamorous friends

They went on to become some of Australia’s most influential arts practitioners, but to Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi photographer and film-maker Michael Riley, they were simply his close friends.

Young curators, actors, dancers, artists, academics and lawyers formed this close-knit community of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creatives and activists working in Sydney's inner-west at a formative time. It was a setting that bred ground-breaking exhibitions, art collectives, dance and theatre companies; social justice and land rights campaigns; and Aboriginal medical, legal and housing services through the 1980s and 1990s. Michael Riley took photographic portraits, celebrating his friends as ‘very sophisticated and … very glamorous’, as he noted in a 1989 interview. Riley’s portrait of Gurindji and Mudpurra father and daughter, Joseph and Brenda L Croft, show the intertwining of family and community, activism and arts. Joseph was a cultural advisor to governments and Indigenous rights advocate throughout his life. Brenda is a leading artist, curator and lecturer. Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman Hetti Perkins and Noonuccal woman Avril Quaill became influential curators and arts leaders.