ARTISTIC LICENCE

Picture this,” entreats Will Huxley, one half of the contemporary arts coupling known as The Huxleys, who have just wrapped production on a photographic series that frames a pair of intergalactic queer Elvises falling to earth and engaging with the Outback. “We’re in the middle of country Victoria, dressed in full-sequinned costumes, gold guitars, tight bums, big pompadours, blue and green faces — the full showbiz fizz — about to take our first frame for the warm-up shot hitchhiking, and this ute, with a dog hanging out, drives up the dead-end dirt road and a guy yells out, ‘My dog likes the look of you’.”

The air heavies with menacing ambiguity, continues Garrett Huxley, as he describes 30-plus heat melting their metallic faces. The driver alights and carries on: “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Do you fellas pick up many sheilas looking like this?”.

The Huxleys, claiming to be well practised in dealing with the punter who piss-takes their performative art, calmly explain their art concept of alien Elvises trying to divine their way back home. They describe an Elvis fever dream — a road-tripping grab-bag of references running the glitzy gamut from Liberace to David Lynch; the Yellow Brick Road to the rockabilly Yakuzas in Japan’s Yoyogi Park — all of which odyssey into Kenneth Cook’s nightmarish fable .