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Neon Parc acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung as the Traditional Owners and sovereign custodians of the Country on which we operate. We pay our deepest respects to their Elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

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Kait James
‘Kiss my Moom’
Brunswick
17 Apr.–16 May.
2026
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Neon Parc is thrilled to present ‘Kiss My Moom’, a major solo exhibition by Kait James from 17 April–16 May. Opening 24 April, 6–8pm, at Neon Parc Brunswick.

Kait James is a proud Wadawurrung artist whose work challenges stereotypical representations of Indigenous culture through her identity as a woman of Indigenous and Anglo heritage. Working predominantly with textiles she interrogates the ways in which Aboriginal identity has been flattened, commodified and misunderstood within Australian visual culture, subverting these narratives through humour, critique and sharp political commentary.

For ‘Kiss My Moom’, James presents a new body of hand-stitched embroideries using vintage Aboriginal calendar tea towels and souvenir textiles from the 1970s and 80s. These mass-produced objects — created from a white, colonial perspective — reduce complex cultural practices into decorative motifs and simplified imagery. By reworking these materials, James exposes and destabilises their underlying assumptions, transforming them into sites of resistance.
Across eighteen new works, James overlays these surfaces with bold, wry text. Phrases such as ‘ALL THE WHITE NOISE’, ‘ALIEN NATION’, ‘NOT MY KING’, are stitched in vibrant, textured lettering, cutting across the imagery beneath. In the title work, ‘Kiss My Moom’ (2026), “Moom” — in Wadawurrung language — translates to “ass” – a statement of pointed and irreverent defiance at the centre of the exhibition.

This body of work marks a shift in tone for James, yet as humour remains central, the texts and slogans are more direct and politically charged. Fractured compositions disrupt scenes of Aboriginal life depicted on the original tea towels and designs, such as in ‘Alien Nation’ (2026), ceremonial imagery is overlaid with bright green alien faces, critiquing the persistent framing of First Nations people as “outsiders” within their own Country. In ‘Not My King’ (2026), colonial iconography is distorted and unapologetically defaced, directly rejecting the authority of the monarchy and its ongoing symbolic power in Australia.

Following the momentum of recent projects including ‘Blak Flags’ (Neon Parc, 2024) and the nationally touring ‘Red Flags’ (2024–2027), ‘Kiss My Moom’ further asserts James’ practice as a critical and cultural intervention between art and activism. By reclaiming and recontextualising “Aboriginalia”, Kait James continues to challenge colonial frameworks and question broader understandings of Indigenous culture in Australia.

Exhibitions (4)
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