Desert Ballads and Sharp Spurs : Kim Leutwyler
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Desert Ballads and Sharp Spurs is both a reckoning and a return: to the desert, to my foundations, and to myself.
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Kim Leutwyler
Desert Ballads and Sharp Spurs
24 february – 7 march, 2026
"The cowboy is often mythologised as a figure of freedom and toughness, yet is inseparable from frontier violence, land theft, and exclusionary ideals of masculinity. Growing up in the desert as a queer and gender-diverse person, I was surrounded by a cowboy culture I never fully belonged to. This body of work marks a return to the iconography and landscapes of my childhood.
The desert has always felt like home. After moving to Australia, this connection deepened as I began exploring new environments, recognising familiar rhythms and forms across continents. These landscape paintings are not literal depictions. Instead, they merge memory and imagination, creating an ongoing dialogue between places I have known.
Desert Ballads and Sharp Spurs is both a reckoning and a return: to the desert, to my foundations, and to myself. In recent years, I have undertaken intensive healing, and making this work has reconnected me with parts of myself that were fractured and silenced. The desert is reframed as a site of personal exploration. It is not empty or barren, but a site of transformation and survival that mirrors my own experience.
Alongside my painting practice, I have also returned to ceramics after a 19-year absence. Acts of cutting canvas, embroidery, and hybrid ceramic–painting elements reflect these processes of fragmentation and repair. My sculptural works draw on cowboy objects associated with control, adornment, and power: spurs, horse bits, and mounted reproductions of the nipples I permanently removed during chest surgery, hung like hunting trophies. Each of these objects is recast as a symbol of agency and release."
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