Throughout his career, Queensland performance artist Luke Roberts has created characters and appropriated historical figures as a therapeutic and emancipating activity, constructing alternative narratives relating to religion, sexuality and history. His alter-ego Alice Jitterbug — an early creation, invented in the mid-1970s while studying at Queensland College of the Arts — appears here as a barmaid in the pub of his hometown, Alpha, in Central Queensland. Referencing French artist Edouard Manet’s famous painting Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère 1882, Alice shows a little wear and tear and a lot of hospitality, living in the outback that catalysed her into being.