Todd Fuller’s 2021 solo show at .M Contemporary Gallery explored what appears to be the first evidence of a European same-sex relationship in Australia as well as what could be considered the first European trial and recorded gay-hate-crime.

The incident at the heart of Fuller’s exhibition involved two young Dutch sailors off the coast of Western Australia nearly 50 years before Captain Cook ‘found’ Australia. In 1727 an East Indes Trade vessel veered off course so see the land that we now know as Western Australia and was shipwrecked on a reef. According to diary notes and the ships log, these sailors performed the act of sodomy and were then marooned on separate islands as punishment for their crime. From the reference material available, Fuller speculates the nature of this relationship in these drawings and animation.