Meth Kelly Installation Image

“a life in question will unfold
tattoo parlour to the tote of this glass pipe
the nation shall rise up
in a hail of burn outs, black eyes and southern crosses."

Warwick Thornton’s bold video installation Meth Kelly explores how Australia’s colonial frontier narrative has been shaped by the imaginary heroic actions of the cult figure Ned Kelly. Through a video work projected in one of the shadowy tunnels of the ex-convict structures at Cockatoo Island, this work questions the legitimacy of Kelly’s hero status through a modern reinterpretation of his moral persona. Thornton skews the national narrative rooted in the romance of a Western, by transforming Kelly into a “meth head robbing a 7 Eleven”, placing him in a banal (sub) urban delinquent realm, far removed from cult status.