An Ode to Bushrangers and Buggery

An Ode to Bushrangers and Buggery [2021]

Single-channel video loop, gilt frame, fabric.

An Ode to Bushrangers and Buggery plays on the idea of an encounter between the legendary gay bushranger, Captain Moonlite, and Ned Kelly. They were contemporaries and, while they may or may not have actually met, these bushrangers certainly knew of one another.

Audio is sampled from a 1940s radio play, Rogues Gallery. The screen text borrows from Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series of paintings, a body of work that feeds into a nation-wide, cultural idolisation of Kelly. By contrast, queer history, or even the idea that a queer history might exist in Australia, is often ignored or rejected. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there…