Courtney Act, the renowned drag queen and stage name and alter ego of Shane Jenek, has been commemorated with a commissioned larger-than-life junk sculpture portrait by Paul Yore at the National Portrait Gallery.

Australia has a vibrant drag culture that goes back decades, from Les Girls and the iconic film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, to the more recent global stage of Drag Race Down Under.

Of Australian drag queen performers, Courtney Act is undoubtedly the most prominent, with a career spanning more than two decades and attracting a national and international audience.

Other Australian drag queens have tended to attract a more localised audience, such as Melbourne’s unforgettable Art Simone, Adelaide’s Kween Kong, Jojo Zaho, a First Nations queen from Newcastle, and the incredibly talented filmmaker and drag queen Lazy Susan.

A challenge for an artist commissioned to execute a portrait of a drag queen is what to show and what to highlight.

Is it simply the glitter of the façade to depict, or something more nuanced that shows the intellect behind the mask?

The problem was already beautifully spelt out in 1969 in John Brack’s great painting of Barry Humphries as the character Mrs Everage, in the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection and occasionally exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Brack carefully recorded Humphries’ famous fictional alter-ego, Dame Edna Everage, but on closer inspection, behind the pink glasses and mask appear the keen, watchful features of Humphries, and one quickly becomes aware that the outrageous clothes and oversized gloves hide a brilliant, alert intellect.

Visual artist Paul Yore at a preview of his exhibition ‘It’s All Wrong But It’s Alright’, on display at Hobart’s Black Temple Gallery (a deconsecrated colonial church) during the Dark Mofo festival in June. Photo: NPG.

Paul Yore is a young Gippsland-based artist who has built a reputation for working with banners, tapestries, quilted hangings and mixed media installations that engage with political, religious and LGBT themes. Critics have used terms like “kitsch queerness” and “bad taste aesthetic” to describe his art practice. He sometimes shocks, but always intrigues the viewer.

Yore was in awe of his subject. He is quoted as saying, “In the constellation of Australian queer icons, Courtney is a very bright star indeed; a trailblazer and true interdisciplinarian: all-round performer, author, advocate and globetrotting personality boldly putting Australian creativity on the map. As such, the work was beset with significant material, formal and conceptual challenges.

“My usual choice of material is discarded trash, and my method is collage, yet I was charged with creating a likeness of Courtney, all the while expressing my own artistic point of view in my visual language. The result is a surrealistic junk-art assemblage; a work that exists in a state of flux: halfway between image and sculpture, fantasy and reality, light and dark.”

Courtney Act with her portrait. Photo: National Portrait Gallery.

The portrait is an over life-size mask-like head composed of junk materials, some sourced from his sitter’s dressing room, including leftover sequins, diamantes and acrylic nails. To this, a beer can, a plastic banana, a mobile phone, bits of dolls, a football, shells, sunglasses, stilettos and all sorts of other paraphernalia have been sourced, as well as a tiara-like hair piece that spells out the name ‘Courtney Act’.

It is an engaging piece that will invariably draw a crowd keen to discover the myriad details that went into the work. The scale and glitter may be seen as a celebration of gay culture – like a spectacular Mardi Gras veneer. It may take time to see whether this portrait is seen as a celebration of the artistry and keen intellect we associate with Courtney Act.

The National Portrait Gallery is on King Edward Terrace in front of the High Court and next to the National Gallery of Australia. It’s open every day of the year from 10 am to 5 pm (except 25 December).