Luke Roberts

Bio

Luke Roberts (b. 1952) is an artist primarily known for performance, video, and photographic works. Since the late 1970s Roberts’ work has collapsed the personal and the political, blending themes of cosmology, religion, and science-fiction to reimagine how we engage with sexuality, spirituality, and human history. His ground-breaking performances under the alter-ego Alice Jitterbug were unlike any other artist working in Australia at the time. Working in an era when homosexuality in Queensland was illegal and persecuted under the Joh Bjelke-Petersen Government, his work is a testament to the radical potential of a queer sensibility. Many of Roberts’ early works are situated in his rural upbringing and outback folklore, developing in later years into an interest in how we read and are seduced by history – which turns into future myths.

Roberts’ most recent ongoing performance persona is her Divine Holiness Pope Alice, Ambassadress from Infinity and Manifestation of Extraterrestrial Consciousness. This mythical alter-ego character draws on Roberts’ ongoing interest in Roman Catholicism and other forms of religion and spiritualism with science fiction. Rather than embracing religion, his works imply an anti-clerical, kitsch, and occult attitude. Roberts’ oeuvre is idiosyncratic, with a multitude of mythologies built around the characters he has embodied, with the work or performance destabilising the local and cosmological with the past, present, and future.

Roberts’ major survey AlphaStation/Alphaville in 2010–11 was exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. In 2015, Pope Alice performed at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. In 2019, Roberts was included in The National 2019: New Australian Art at Carriageworks, Sydney. In 2022, Roberts performed at Dark Mofo, Museum of New and Old Art, Tasmania, and was included in QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection at the National Gallery of Victoria International (NGV), Melbourne. Roberts work is held in many institutional collections in Australia including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; NGV, Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Home of the Arts, Gold Coast (HOTA); Griffith University Art Collection, Brisbane; Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane; Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane; Rockhampton Art Gallery, Rockhampton; and the University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane.

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