Michael Anthony O’Ferrall was born in India, the son of Colonel John O’Ferrall of the British Army and his wife Valerie Minchinton. After India became independent the family returned to England.
On completing school O’Ferrall left England to hitchhike across the then accessible roads through Turkey, the middle east, Afghanistan, India, Thailand and Malaysia before arriving at Perth on Christmas Eve, 1965.
For the next few years he undertook various unskilled labouring jobs, including at the Whyalla shipyards, which involved working with asbestos.
This gave him sufficient funds to enrol in a degree in Asian studies at the Australian National University. He had an active extra curricula life at the ANU, becoming active in the Poetry Society and Jazz Club as well as organizing events on campus. In September 1970, he married fellow student Ilse Alps.
The couple moved to Sydney where some years later he became one of the early students to complete the new Diploma of Museum Studies at the University of Sydney.
Shortly after completing his studies the O’Ferrall family, which now included a baby daughter Elvira, moved to Yirrkala where he became the community arts organiser.
In 1979, after he was appointed lecturer at James Cook University, the family moved to Townsville. In 1984 he left academic life for Perth, when he was appointed the first curator of Aboriginal and Asian art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
He became a pivotal figure in the west, an active advocate for Aboriginal artists. In 1988 he enabled the Gallery to acquire the Louis Allen Collection of Arnhem land and Tiwi art, which had previously been housed in the Unity States. He later used the Allen collection as the basis for his groundbreaking exhibition, K_eeper of the Secrets_. In 1990 he was curator for the first exhibition of Aboriginal art to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. Even though only two artists, Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls, were represented he made sure that viewers understood the diversity of Australian Aboriginal visual traditions.
He also foresaw the need to encourage Indigenous Australians to become curators within the system rather than limiting themselves to be makers of art. He was responsible for the Art Gallery of Western Australia establishing an Indigenous curatorial internship.
In 1995 O’Ferrall formally ended his employment at the gallery, but continued to be involved with the collection and staff, and was a significant contributor to the Indigenous Art book published by the gallery in 2001.
He conducted many independent workshops for artists around the state. In 2010 he discovered he was suffering from mesothelioma, a legacy of his early career in the shipyards.
- Writers:
-
akirpalani
Joanna Mendelssohn
- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2013
