The Cross Art Projects

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The Cross Art Projects The Cross Art Projects is a contemporary art gallery in the heart of Kings Cross

The Cross Art Projects foregrounds contemporary work that reflects the multiple relationships between art and life, art and the public sphere and explores the boundaries of this context. We are attentive to the local without sacrificing the scope of indigenous and international views. Cross Art enhances its projects with conversations, roundtables and screenings including talks by local activist, architectural and heritage groups.

OPENING TOMORROWSaturday 10 October, 2pm:WEST PAPUA IS NOT AN EMPTY LAND'Papua bukan tanah kosong'ARTISTSAlyakha Kolekti...
09/10/2026

OPENING TOMORROW
Saturday 10 October, 2pm:

WEST PAPUA IS NOT AN EMPTY LAND
'Papua bukan tanah kosong'

ARTISTS
Alyakha Kolektif (Markus Rumbino, Brian Suebu, Syors Deda & Marzamel Kristian Guijangge)
Fitri DK
Dicky Takndare
Taring Padi
Muhammad ‘Ucup’ Yusuf
+ Screening of Pesta Babi/Pig Feast: Colonialism in our time

Join us at 2pm for the opening and a conversation with Sophie Chao (Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, USYD), who writes on the adverse impacts of deforestation and industrial oil palm expansion across the customary lands and territories of the Marind communities in Merauke Regency, West Papua

Exhibition runs 10 October to 7 November 2026
The Cross Art Projects

West Papua is not an empty land relays conversations, critique, and shared cultural knowledge amongst leading artists and voices from Indonesia’s post-colonial and environmental movements. Artists from three activist groups—Taring Padi formed in 1998, Udeido in 2018, and Alyakha Kolektif formed a year later—use painting, woodblock, film and sound art with acuity and spirit, to amplify awareness of accelerating land theft in West Papua to regional audiences.

The exhibition centrepiece is the documentary film Pesta Babi: Colonialism in Our Time (2026) directed by journalist Dandhy Laksono and anthropologist Cypri Dale. It focuses on the escalation in land clearing concessions in Papua under president Prabowo Subianto and his predecessor Joko Widodo. Papua hosts the world’s third-largest rainforest and wetlands and is a global biodiversity shield. Deforestation on the island relentlessly continues as Indonesia seeks to maintain its position as the world’s leading producer of palm oil.

Visit www.crossart.com.au for more information

Artwork: Syors Deda, Untitled (from Kiney Waloboney), 2026, oil and acrylic on barkcloth, 54 x 121 cm.

Opening Saturday 10 October, 2pm:WEST PAPUA IS NOT AN EMPTY LAND 'Papua bukan tanah kosong'ARTISTS Alyakha Kolektif (Mar...
02/10/2026

Opening Saturday 10 October, 2pm:

WEST PAPUA IS NOT AN EMPTY LAND
'Papua bukan tanah kosong'

ARTISTS
Alyakha Kolektif (Markus Rumbino, Brian Suebu, Syors Deda & Marzamel Kristian Guijangge)
Fitri DK
Dicky Takndare
Taring Padi
Muhammad ‘Ucup’ Yusuf
+ Screening of Pesta Babi/Pig Feast: Colonialism in our time

Join us at 2pm for the opening and a conversation with Sophie Chao (Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, USYD), who writes on the adverse impacts of deforestation and industrial oil palm expansion across the customary lands and territories of the Marind communities in Merauke Regency, West Papua

Exhibition runs 10 October to 7 November 2026
The Cross Art Projects

West Papua is not an empty land relays conversations, critique, and shared cultural knowledge amongst leading artists and voices from Indonesia’s post-colonial and environmental movements. Artists from three activist groups—Taring Padi formed in 1998, Udeido in 2018, and Alyakha Kolektif formed a year later—use painting, woodblock, film and sound art with acuity and spirit, to amplify awareness of accelerating land theft in West Papua to regional audiences.

The exhibition centrepiece is the documentary film Pesta Babi: Colonialism in Our Time (2026) directed by journalist Dandhy Laksono and anthropologist Cypri Dale. It focuses on the escalation in land clearing concessions in Papua under president Prabowo Subianto and his predecessor Joko Widodo. Papua hosts the world’s third-largest rainforest and wetlands and is a global biodiversity shield. Deforestation on the island relentlessly continues as Indonesia seeks to maintain its position as the world’s leading producer of palm oil.

Visit www.crossart.com.au for more information

Artwork: Fitri DK, Hidden Disaster, woodcut print on paper, 60 x 80 cm, 2025.

IncarcerNation closes at NCCA this Saturday 2pmJack Green (born 1953)1.Boomerang story 1 acrylic on linen 36 x 36 cmThis...
24/09/2026

IncarcerNation closes at NCCA this Saturday 2pm

Jack Green (born 1953)

1.
Boomerang story 1
acrylic on linen
36 x 36 cm

This painting is about Alex Doomadgee. Alex is a Waanyi fella. He was travelling on a Qantas plane and carrying two boomerangs. They wouldn’t let Alex on the plane with his boomerangs. Crazy really. They weren’t fightin’ boomerangs, but ceremonial boomerangs. You can tell ceremonial boomerangs as they are small and the edges aren’t sharp. We use them like a musical instrument to sing with. In this painting you can see the two big fighting boomerangs above the plane. They’d let fella on the plane carrying a guitar, but not an Aboriginal fella with his ceremonial boomerangs. Alex tried to explain the difference but they didn’t listen and took them from him. The story hit the media and this painting tells the story how we see it.

The funny things is the Qantas planes carry a Kangaroo symbol on their tail. The Kangaroo, he’s in our songs and ceremonies. We proud he spoke up, that’s why I painted him riding a kangaroo on the plane, holding the boomerangs and an Aboriginal flag. He’s flying over his country and all his family down at Dry Creek and Fish River are with him holding their ceremonial boomerangs and singing with him. Just a shame he couldn’t just ride the kangaroo through the sky as they’d both be singing to the clap of the boomerangs. — Jack Green

2.
Unlicensed, Unregistered, Prison, 2016
acrylic on linen
46 x 56 cm

Our motorcars take a hammering on the dirt roads and getting them fixed-up costs a big mob of money. Its big mob of money to get the motorcar registered too; money us Aboriginal people just don’t have. On top of this a lot of people don’t have a licence, it’s just too hard to get a licence in remote places. But we gotta travel for work, ceremony, for funerals, health and visiting family. This painting shows everyday life, how the police stop all us mob in our old motorcars trying to get in to town. They stop us and next thing you find yourself in a cage or might even be prison. — Jack Green

📸: 1-3

Billiamook (Gapal) worked as a multi-lingual interpreter for amateur photographer Paul Foelsche. He was locked up on min...
24/09/2026

Billiamook (Gapal) worked as a multi-lingual interpreter for amateur photographer Paul Foelsche. He was locked up on minor charges through the 1880s. Larrakia artist and anthropologist Gary Lee has championed Gapal’s life and art, and has continued to retrieve ancestors from colonial archives, as in his splendid gold-leaf embossed tribute to ‘Gapal’ (2026).�� Cutting to recent times, is Gary Lee’s work ‘Sad Buddha’ (2016). In 2016, the image of a young inmate, Dylan Voller, restrained in a chair and wearing a spit hood was aired on ABC Australia’s Shame. The kids in Don Dale Youth Detention Centre had been held in substandard conditions. The solitary confinement cells were the worst. Lee’s photograph of a young man protectively crouching as if to ward off an assailant, is a reminder of the constant threat of such structural imbalances.

We are grateful to Maurice O’Riordan for his assistance in cataloguing these works

IncarcerNation closes at NCCA this Saturday 2 pm

📸: 1-2 3:
�IncarcerNation continues at NCCA until 26 September��‘Gapal’, gold foil on digital print on Ilford cotton rag paper, 31.4 x 25 cm
‘Sad Buddha’, digital print, 42 x 50 cm

Since the Royal Commission’s findings in 1991, there have been more than 630 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander death...
18/09/2026

Since the Royal Commission’s findings in 1991, there have been more than 630 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody nationwide.

Chips Mackinolty’s ‘Kumanjayi’ (2020) is a cry for those who have died in detention: repeated red stamps of the word ‘Kumanjayi’ — a substitute name used out of respect in Warlpiri after a person passes away — framed against a vast dark prison wall.

With all but two Australian jurisdictions still refusing to stop the imprisonment of children as young as 10, his banner ‘Kids on Country, Not in Custody’ (2020) extends that response nationally.

We are grateful for Bernadette Ryan for assistance in cataloguing these works.

The show continues at NCCA until 26 September.


‘Kids on Country, Not in Custody’, 2020, digital print on vinyl banner, 94 x 300 cm

‘Kumanjayi’, 2020, Ilford Galerie Prestige Cotton Rag Smooth 300gsm, 50 x 80 cm

📸:

Archie Moore’s ‘Cairns’ (2025) comprises two towering ‘classical’ columns built from old volumes of Hansard — one for th...
17/09/2026

Archie Moore’s ‘Cairns’ (2025) comprises two towering ‘classical’ columns built from old volumes of Hansard — one for the House of Representatives, one for the Senate. Each bound volume records elected officials deploying rhetoric and procedure over lives far removed from their own, in debates followed by inertia and silence.

‘Cairns’ is showing in IncarcerNation at NCCA until 26 September.

Artwork courtesy of Archie Moore () and The Commercial (). We are grateful to Amanda Rowell, , and Jaimee Edwards for their curatorial and administrative support.

We acknowledge our amazing patrons , and helene.george (), whose generous financial support made the delivery and inclusion of this work possible.

Archie Moore, Cairns, 2025, found hardcover books (Hansard volumes, House of Representatives; Hansard volumes, Senate), installation dimensions variable (installation views). IncarcerNation at Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA), 2026 in collaboration with

Image credits: 1 2-5

Image 3 also features: Sandra Saunders, Lore vs Law, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 122 cm.
Image 5 also features: Vincent Namatjira, Albert selling artefacts to the Police, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 101 x 76 cm.

Australia proudly supports the rule of law as a paramount feature of its democracy, and markets its national reputation ...
10/09/2026

Australia proudly supports the rule of law as a paramount feature of its democracy, and markets its national reputation on this characteristic. But a national or an international rules-based order is not a given. The scandal of Australia’s two-tiered justice system sours this posturing, in delivering far worse outcomes for First Nations Australians than for all others. Too many Aboriginal families are affected by mass incarceration. Commenting on this reality are the legendary group of artists from Anangu Country who have combined art practice with community engagement—Anwar Young, Frank Young and Unrupa Rhonda Dick. Frank Young is a leader in Amata in north-western South Australia and his grandson Anwar works with vulnerable young people. They collaborate on the Kulata Tjuta Project, teaching young men the traditional art of making kulata/spears. Shown here, ‘Kulata Tjuta—Wati kulunypa tjukurpa (Many spears—Young fella story)’ is a profound statement of the artists’ ambition to heal and care for community, envisioning a future in which their young men ‘stand behind culture, not behind bars’.

The artwork won the 2017 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and is currently on view as part of IncarcerNation at NCCA until 26 September 2026.

www.nccart.com.au

Curated by Djon Mundine OAM, Don Christophersen, Jo Holder and Petrit Abazi

_

Artwork: Frank Young, Unrupa Rhonda Dick, Anwar Young, Kulata Tjuta — Wati Kulunypa Tjukurpa (Many Spears — Young Fella Story), 2017, digital print, wood, kangaroo tendon, kiti (natural glue), size variable. Courtesy of the artist,Tjala Arts, South Australia and APYCC. Photos: Nicholas Gouldhurst.
1m

In collaboration with :'The first and last voices you will hear when entering and exiting IncarcerNation are those of Fi...
04/09/2026

In collaboration with :

'The first and last voices you will hear when entering and exiting IncarcerNation are those of First Nations kids who have spent time in detention centres.

Code Black/Riot, 2025 exposes how youth detention systems target and violate the human rights of First Nations children in Australia. Taking its name from the language used within these institutions, the work presents interviews with children and staff, interspersed with film taken of the subjects at play, revealing the violence inherent in a system that works to deprive children of a future.

The crisis of mass incarceration of First Nations youth in Australia is an issue that demands not only national attention, but also collective action.

Also part of the Code Black/Riot project is an original text from Behrouz Boochani in which the writer reflects on his lived experience inside an Australian immigration detention centre on Manus Island and the parallels he sees with the system of First Nations youth detention.

NCCA is grateful to our lenders for allowing us to exhibit this work. Courtesy of the artists, , and '

Curated by Djon Mundine OAM, Don Christophersen, Jo Holder and Petrit Abazi

IncarcerNation runs until 26 September 2026





Code Black/Riot, 2025
Four-channel digital video installation, colour, sound
33 mins�
Photography: 1-3 ; 4-6

Address

8 Llankelly Place, Kings Cross (Off Orwell Street)
Sydney, NSW
2011

Opening Hours

Thursday 11am - 6pm
Friday 11am - 6pm
Saturday 11am - 6pm

Telephone

+61293572058

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