Gail Mabo

Gail Mabo is a multi-disciplinary artist, currently residing in Townsville, whose practices include dance, acting and visual art. She was born in Queensland in 1965 to revered land rights activist Eddie Mabo and Bonita Mabo (who in 2013 was named as an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia).

After completing her early education at the first school for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Townsville, opened by her father in the 1970s, Gail studied dance at the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre in Sydney from 1984 to 1987.   She performed in Jimmy Chi’s Bran Nue Dae in its 1991 Sydney season and worked as a choreographer and dancer in Tracey Moffat's 1986 short film Watch Out and as an actor in Moffat’s Nice Coloured Girls in 1985. In 2005 she directed the stage show Koiki which was a performance based on the life of her father.

In 2005 she completed a Certificate IV in Visual Arts at the Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE and a Diploma of Visual Arts at the same TAFE in 2007. She has enjoyed immediate success as a visual artist that has seen her involved in many group and solo exhibitions across Australia. Her work deals with contemporary expressions of Indigenous identity, peeling back of layers of history to reveal the spirits of the Indigenous peoples who lived on these lands. Much of her work is inspired by connection to land, and invites the audience to reflect on their own lives and experiences within this land. Gail is also a highly sought after public speaker and the mother of triplets.