Of Stone and Blood 1
2025
Medium
inkjet print
Measurements
129.1 × 89.6 cm (image and sheet)
Credit Line
Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, D’Lan Contemporary, and anonymous donors, 2025
© Dean Cross. Image courtesy STATION Gallery, Melbourne
Gallery location
Gallery 8
Level 2, NGV Australia
About this work
Of stone and blood 1 is a melancholic meditation on emotional memory, time and lineage. Dean Cross is the first man in his family not to enlist in military service, breaking a chain of duty that had endured for over 145 years. This personal rupture drives the work’s emotional force. Originally commissioned by the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, the series was created for an international audience, yet Cross chose to craft a deeply personal response. Informed by what he calls ‘blood memory’ – the genetic and spiritual inheritances passed through generations – the works explore the layered, often contradictory aspects of identity shaped by ancestors who were both the coloniser and colonised.