BLUE BOY

“Blue Boy is about a young man who once believed in war.
Who now tries to believe in peace — through art.”

The Blue Boy Project

A Post-War Vision from the Australian Psyche What happens when a nation forgets what war really costs?

The Blu Boi Project is a multi-year, multi-disciplinary artwork by Jackson Rutherford that explores Australia’s mythologising of war through a deeply personal, futuristic lens. Growing up queer in a conservative community, Jackson found early obsession with military history and aesthetics — a common outlet for repressed masculinity. This fascination grew more urgent when his brother Harrison enlisted in the Australian Defence Force in 2015, just two weeks after turning eighteen.

“The day I saw his service portrait, the fantasy dissolved. War wasn’t far away. It was in my family. My brother saw his own possible death as noble.”

This project is Jackson’s attempt to reckon with that tension — to interrogate how Australian identity often intertwines with violence, and how young men continue to be seduced by the heroic myth.

A Future-Australia Forgotten by Time

Set 80 years from now in a post-civil-war, Renaissance-esque Australia, The Blue Boy Project imagines a world where war has faded into myth — but its echoes still shape the minds of a new generation. In the past, “The Blue Boys” were an elite group of Power-Ranger-esque police, clad in iconic uniform and fueled by stimulant tanks “Hero-Fuel”, The Blue Boys , believe they are saviours of the Empire at the core of an appealing militarist system.

Now, years have passed since the war ended, and The Basin is now an isolated territory of peace and plenty. Edward, a young Blue Boy Cadet in search of purpose, identity, and adventure embarks on a pilgrimage to see the old heroes when one night a bayonet falls from the sky in-front of him, and he has no idea what it is.

The rag-tad group that assembles comes to terms with a harsher reality when they meet the un-named Blue Boy, a jaded and traumatized young ghost residing in the haunted hills of the old war. As the boys travel back, they have no system left to rely on and must work together against conflicts and differences, while we the audience see more of the struggles of reintegration for the young Blue Boy.

Inspired by isolationist Frontier and Settler iconography paired with Australian Anzac mythology, this project critiques nationalistic heroism and questions what a war memorial offer to viewers, with it’s emphasis on heroism and honour, while still promoting the system that consumes young men.

The Exhibition

The debut exhibition of The Blu Boi Project will premiere at Unassigned Gallery in 2025, featuring:

• 10+ large-scale oil paintings on wood

• 50+ ink drawings and visual poems

• Sculptural relics, pseudo-propaganda, and religious war artefacts

• Custom armour from the film’s world

• Soundtrack and projection work from the film

• A performance piece: The Blue Boy will roam with bloody uniform as a reflection on the killing often missed on our war memory

At the centre of the space: an invitation to reflect. On myth. On memory. On Regret.