"I hope you won't forget me when I am far away, and all my bones are mouldered away," it begins.

"I have not closed an eye since I have lost sight of you your precious sight was always a welcome and loving charming spectacle."

It ends with, "I hope you won't fall in love with no other man when I am dead."

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It is the only surviving convict love letter between two men.

The letter was the inspiration for a collaboration between Rodney Croome and artist Raymond Arnold nearly 20 years ago for the Ten Days on the Island festival, which paired writers and artists together for its inaugural exhibition.

It is being showcased once more as part of the Twist exhibition for Dark Mofo.

Prendergast was a convict on Norfolk Island and was one of the leaders of the Cooking Pot Riot in 1846.

This riot occurred when a new commandant arrived on the island and took away some of the privileges the convicts had to cook for themselves.

Several convicts were in same-sex relationships, Mr Croome said.

A record from the time notes a minister on Norfolk Island claiming that there were 300 men "living as man and wife," he said.

These same-sex relationships were very strong and were feared by the commandants of convict stations, Mr Croome said.

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What they feared more than the relationships themselves were the threats that these relationships posed to their authority, he said.

They often found that same-sex couples were at the centre of any trouble and went to great lengths to keep them apart. Those attempts would often fail because the convicts would find ways to get back together.

The letter survived because it was preserved by the commandant on Norfolk Island, who included it in his report to London about the "depravity" there was on the island before he arrived, Mr Croome said.

When Mr Croome discovered the letter in the archives, it was not well known.

When he first encountered it, he said that he "was very moved by it because it was a testament to deep love between two men".

"I also felt great pride that these men, despite everything else that they'd been through, still finding love and joy in each other's arms," he said.

It's become more widely known in the gay community but is still under-recognised in the country as a whole, Mr Croome said.

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Mr Croome took the original letter and included various additions between the lines that urge the viewer to remember this history.

He wanted to impart the importance of this history "being made visible and being reclaimed".

One of his additions to the letter is the line "What was unspeakable must be spoken," which Croome said was a reference to the euphemism that 19th-century society used for homosexuality as "the unspeakable vice".

Raymond Arnold then took that text with Croome's additions and turned it into a metal etching which was then turned into a print.

When Mr Arnold encountered the letter, he got the sense that it was like something out of a 19th-century novel but also something from history.

The text which ended up on Arnold's print is shown to be held in place with numerous screws so it "can't be pushed to one side, so it can't be ignored," Croome said.

But for Arnold, the screws echo the situation of convicts who were constrained and contained. He hopes that the audiences see "something of themselves" in the image.

When the work was first showcased twenty years ago, it had only been a few years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania.

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It had been a sometimes "acrimonious debate" and people were still "wrestling with the place of the LGBT community in Tasmania," Mr Croome said.

The LGBTQIA+ community were more visible and demanded their rights for the first time.

Having the artwork revived 20 years later is timely once again, Mr Croome said, particularly as there is debate and antagonism towards the trans community.

"It's a timely reminder that we've always been here, and we're not going away," he said.

He hopes that viewers will come away with a realisation that the history of the LGBTQIA+ community is an important part of "who we are as Tasmanians today."

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