Visions of Rodeo (excerpt) by Hilary Thurlow 2017, printed in Sugarcane Magazine.
Interest in rural landscapes and those haunting them has followed Australian artists, from painters Arthur Streeton and Russell Drysdale to photographer Max Dupain, who have all captured the stockman and their associated tropes of cowboy boots and wide-brim hats in various ways. Revaluating the milieu of stockmen is painter Bryce Anderson. Drawing upon reflections of Australian heteronormative masculinities, his series “Rodeo Role Play” acts as an interrogation of the transition of the Australian ‘stockman’ into the Americanised ‘cowboy’ through the first appearances of rodeo in Australia. Prior to this series Anderson was already engaging with issues surrounding identity in Australia with bodies of work focusing on equestrian, horse-racing and race day social rituals. The spectacle of the rodeo provided another rich, microcosmic social arena with which to engage. Anderson’s ongoing series “Rodeo Role Play” (begun in 2016) is the result of visits to rural Queensland rodeos and the gathering of rodeo and ‘outback’ images from magazines and books published since the 1950s. The key figure captured within the “Rodeo Role Play” works is that of the cowboy, an extension on Australia’s stockman.
