Main Drag
Easton Dunne
Gallery 4
Roomsheet
Main Drag is a solo exhibition by Easton Dunne that explores queer experiences and identity work through an autobiographical lens within the context of rural and regional Central Queensland on Darumbal, Ghungalu and Wadja Country. It reflects on the joys and frustrations of growing up in a rural and regional area as a queer, trans and non-binary person and then returning to live there as an adult after time away in Meanjin/Brisbane.
The exhibition consists of a looped video of Dunne driving from one end of Rockhampton to the other along the city’s “main drag”, combined with sculptures referencing signs and symbols from roadside billboards along the route. For Dunne, the act of driving itself is a significant marker of life in rural and regional areas. The infinite repetition of the video’s deliberate banality conveys both the desire to “escape” experienced by many young LGBTQIAP+ people who grow up in rural and regional areas, as well as nostalgia for the comforting familiarity that the artist experiences in driving past locations of sites that hold significance for their own coming of age as a young queer person.
Main Drag also attempts to create a space for imagining a queer futurity that is entirely specific to Rockhampton and Central Queensland: one that has queer joy and belonging at its core. By resurfacing imagery and symbols from roadside billboards 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 attempts to resist and reframe the hyper-masculine narrative that casts the area as the “beef capital of Australia”, offering space for imagining an alternate queer utopia in this location through kitsch and camp aesthetics.
Presented by Firstdraft in partnership with Metro Arts, Brisbane.
