ESSAY: ROBERTS 2018.129.001-042
Multidisciplinary artist Luke Roberts has worked in sculpture, installation, painting and live performance, although he is best known for his photographic performances. Exploring expressions of gender, sexuality and identity for these photographic performances, Roberts does more than simply dress up or cross-dress. Instead, he invents specific identities and characters and inhabits them as a vehicle to enter into narratives of cultural, personal or historical significance.
While this strategy recalls French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) and his Rrose Sélavy works, they have few parallels or precursors in Australian art history. In fact, Roberts launched his practice without knowledge of Duchamp’s pseudonym and photographs dressed as a woman. His art education was very traditional and skills based, with almost no attention to conceptual or experimental strategies. Instead, having been raised in the small and remote farming community of Alpha, and then based in Brisbane as an art student at the Queensland College of Art in the early 1970s, Roberts used performance as a space to safely explore aspects of his personality that were discouraged and denied by his conservative Catholic upbringing in his relative isolation. Broader cultural tendencies, particularly the flamboyant and androgynous music scene associated with David Bowie, glam rock and glitter rock, were more visible to Roberts and thus a keener influence than art history. Additionally, Roberts has also remarked how he quite simply found men’s clothing to be quite dull at the time, while that women’s clothing appeared more attractive, eye-catching and liberating.(1)
'Alice Jitterbug: Transformer' 1977 is a suite of photographs that were released in 2017 to celebrate and commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first Alice Jitterbug photoshoot. Jitterbug was a significant early step in Roberts’s development, with her first public outing dating back to 1974. Accompanied by a small group of friends from art school that had relocated from Brisbane to Melbourne, Jitterbug made an evening visit to the NGV, followed by an excursion up Collins Street during which she was mistaken for Germaine Greer. Earlier, there had been a shopping trip to purchase a pair of fashionable platform shoes to complete the outfit (which were difficult to find in larger sizes in Brisbane).
In considering this act it is imperative to recall that cross-dressing, while a tolerated tradition in the confines of theatre, was still prohibited by law at that time — receiving harsh formal and informal punishment if conducted in public. As a consequence, no photographic documentation of this visit was created.(2) In 2014, however, Roberts again made use of the 40th anniversary to have his most recognisable character Her Divine Holiness Pope Alice canonize Alice Jitterbug at an event at the NGV on the Evening of the All Hallows.
Prior to this, in 2003 Roberts had printed a set of six postcards with images of Jitterbug featuring four studio portraits and two candid shots with friends in order to re-circulate this history. Each verso contained a striking anecdote about Alice and the era from friendly observers. Describing the then ambient hostility towards expressions of gender-blurring and homosexuality, peer and friend Gina Gorshus recounted:
'Everything Ms Bug and I did was an expression of our sense of fun, but our fun was taken from us. We were walking works of art, but it often caused such anger and hatred.
'One night in the 1970s I was carted from Rowes Arcade into the watch-house for the amusement of the police. They felt safe in doing whatever they liked. There was no safety net for the likes of me.
'In full make-up I was paraded naked around the watch-house then bashed into a cell occupied by three of my intoxicated, indigenous brothers. They were even more brutalised than I. Our captors sneeringly encouraged them to project their anger at me. In recognition of my "royal" status these fellow detainees threw me "bouquets" produced from their bodily functions.
'There was no official record of the event. What was fact was made fiction, what was fiction was made "fact" by a regime in denial.
'I prayed to Pope Alice for liberation.'(3)
The product of deep reflection and a desire to explore his individual uniqueness, Luke Roberts’s transformation into Alice Jitterbug has since proven to be an integral early step in his artistic development, as well as an important guiding influence for peers and followers. Given the historical context of his brave trail-blazing actions, this set of images can continue as a significant and lasting inspiration for all those seeking to positively redefine the character of their existence.
Endnotes
Essay by Peter McKay, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, May 2018
While this strategy recalls French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) and his Rrose Sélavy works, they have few parallels or precursors in Australian art history. In fact, Roberts launched his practice without knowledge of Duchamp’s pseudonym and photographs dressed as a woman. His art education was very traditional and skills based, with almost no attention to conceptual or experimental strategies. Instead, having been raised in the small and remote farming community of Alpha, and then based in Brisbane as an art student at the Queensland College of Art in the early 1970s, Roberts used performance as a space to safely explore aspects of his personality that were discouraged and denied by his conservative Catholic upbringing in his relative isolation. Broader cultural tendencies, particularly the flamboyant and androgynous music scene associated with David Bowie, glam rock and glitter rock, were more visible to Roberts and thus a keener influence than art history. Additionally, Roberts has also remarked how he quite simply found men’s clothing to be quite dull at the time, while that women’s clothing appeared more attractive, eye-catching and liberating.(1)
'Alice Jitterbug: Transformer' 1977 is a suite of photographs that were released in 2017 to celebrate and commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first Alice Jitterbug photoshoot. Jitterbug was a significant early step in Roberts’s development, with her first public outing dating back to 1974. Accompanied by a small group of friends from art school that had relocated from Brisbane to Melbourne, Jitterbug made an evening visit to the NGV, followed by an excursion up Collins Street during which she was mistaken for Germaine Greer. Earlier, there had been a shopping trip to purchase a pair of fashionable platform shoes to complete the outfit (which were difficult to find in larger sizes in Brisbane).
In considering this act it is imperative to recall that cross-dressing, while a tolerated tradition in the confines of theatre, was still prohibited by law at that time — receiving harsh formal and informal punishment if conducted in public. As a consequence, no photographic documentation of this visit was created.(2) In 2014, however, Roberts again made use of the 40th anniversary to have his most recognisable character Her Divine Holiness Pope Alice canonize Alice Jitterbug at an event at the NGV on the Evening of the All Hallows.
Prior to this, in 2003 Roberts had printed a set of six postcards with images of Jitterbug featuring four studio portraits and two candid shots with friends in order to re-circulate this history. Each verso contained a striking anecdote about Alice and the era from friendly observers. Describing the then ambient hostility towards expressions of gender-blurring and homosexuality, peer and friend Gina Gorshus recounted:
'Everything Ms Bug and I did was an expression of our sense of fun, but our fun was taken from us. We were walking works of art, but it often caused such anger and hatred.
'One night in the 1970s I was carted from Rowes Arcade into the watch-house for the amusement of the police. They felt safe in doing whatever they liked. There was no safety net for the likes of me.
'In full make-up I was paraded naked around the watch-house then bashed into a cell occupied by three of my intoxicated, indigenous brothers. They were even more brutalised than I. Our captors sneeringly encouraged them to project their anger at me. In recognition of my "royal" status these fellow detainees threw me "bouquets" produced from their bodily functions.
'There was no official record of the event. What was fact was made fiction, what was fiction was made "fact" by a regime in denial.
'I prayed to Pope Alice for liberation.'(3)
The product of deep reflection and a desire to explore his individual uniqueness, Luke Roberts’s transformation into Alice Jitterbug has since proven to be an integral early step in his artistic development, as well as an important guiding influence for peers and followers. Given the historical context of his brave trail-blazing actions, this set of images can continue as a significant and lasting inspiration for all those seeking to positively redefine the character of their existence.
Endnotes
- Luke Roberts interviewed by Paul Andrew, remix.org.au, https://remix.org.au/interview-luke-roberts/ published 25 February 2016.
- ibid.
- Luke Roberts, Alice and Gina 1977, postcard printed 2003.
Essay by Peter McKay, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, May 2018
