Main Drag applies aesthetics of kitsch and camp queer visual culture to the stereotypical signs and signifiers of local and communal identity, often seen along the national highway running through Rockhampton, the town in Central Queensland where Dunne resides.
Dunne resurfaces images that the area uses to market itself to visitors, and frame its own identity for locals, with hot pink, fluffy faux fur that resembles cowhide. Dunne resists and reframes the hyper-masculine narrative of being the “beef capital of Australia” as offering the potential for an alternate queer utopia in this regional location.
From the Artist:
“Main Drag is an attempt to make the kind of work that I wish I could have seen as a child . I grew up on an isolated cattle property in Central Queensland, and then boarded as a teenager for high school in Rockhampton. I had an acute sense of my own queerness and transness on a subjective level, but no access to social or cultural representations of these identities within my own regional context or more broadly.” – Easton Dunne.
Image: Easton Dunne
