The Cross Arts Projects – One Too Many

The Cross Arts Projects, Kings Cross, Sydney

We are thrilled to be exhibiting at The Cross Art Projects, Kings Cross, Sydney.

The exhibition will launch on 12 March at 3pm

Exhibition ends on 9 April 2022.

One too many, is a new body of work by artists from the powerhouse art centre and studio Iltja Ntjarra in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). The artists juxtapose the luminous watercolour heritage of Albert Namatjira and Central Australia’s blindingly glorious landscapes with overlays of modernity and powerful political and social statements. One too many opens a window onto the rivers of grog that blight lives and litter landscapes. If you’ve had one too many, you have drunk too much alcohol.

The exhibition’s opening scene is an installation of flattened beer cans, wreckage collected from beside the road between Mparntwe and Ntaria (Hermannsburg), a former Lutheran mission. Painted on each crushed and re-burnished aluminium can is a vignette, a miniature painting that recalls country and western songs about roads that “take me home”. The land is home to the Western Aranda people. The litter suggests you could be singing your heart out as you travel on any Australian country road.

This road runs beside Tjoritja West MacDonnell National Park to old Hermannsburg mission and new mission. Here is the old stone church where Selma Coulthard, artist and project co-ordinator says, ‘you will end up unless you stop drinking.’

Mervyn Rubuntja, Selma Coulthard, Vanessa Inkamala, Dellina Inkamala, Benita Clements, Marcus Wheeler, Betty Wheeler, Dianne Inkamala and Reinhold Inkamala will be exhibiting their extraordinary collection.

Below: Dianne Inkamala – Old Mission Church in Ntaria (Hermannsburg)
Acrylic on recycled aluminum can. 14 x 9 cm