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 2
Ground Level, NGV Australia
About this work
Of Stone and Blood 1 and 4 reference the history of military self-portraiture historically used to document personnel, and the monumentality of grief associated with images of conflict. Dean Cross is the first man in his family not to enlist in military service, breaking an intergenerational chain of duty that had endured for over 145 years. His self-portrait centres notions of self-representation and self-reflection, and grapples with the complexities of personal, familial and cultural histories – an ancestral lineage of both coloniser and colonised.