PASAR MALAM | NIGHT MARKET

Contemporary Printmaking from Indonesia and Australia

A Krack Studio exhibition in Partnership with 16Albermarle Project Space

At the night market you can buy fake Rolex watches, fried grasshoppers and amulets with “magical” powers.

Skinny guys with tattoos operate carnival rides that definitely aren’t safe. There’s a haunted house and a giant

python. Gangsters, pickpockets and revolutionaries lurk in the shadows.

The morning market is for groceries and gossip, but the night market is the world reversed; where our repressed fears and desires are set loose. Many of the works in this exhibition reference mysticism, mythology and ritual; conjuring the dark glamor of “otherness”. For some it’s about revealing stories that have been hidden from the national narrative; for some it’s about pursuing what they believe is right in a world that believes otherwise; for others it means charting the dark terrain of our inner, psychological worlds. 

Every community has a Night Market; a shadow place of buried secrets and illicit pleasures. Pasar Malam is an exhibition of large-format screenprinted works, each 200 x 150 cm, created by Krack Print Studio, Yogyakarta, in collaboration with leading Indonesian and Australian artists. The curators are Krack founding co-partners Malcolm Smith and Sukma Smita, working with the Krack team.

In keeping with the slightly seedy, mysterious and precarious night markets of Java, the exhibition is designed as an immersive and engaging experience. Visitors will navigate a crowded and colourful space, in which our 15 artists bring to life the chaos and permissiveness of the Night Market. The entrance will be guarded by a “loket” (a ticket booth), and coloured lights and strings of flags will lure visitors into the darkness. A specially commissioned soundtrack will animate the clatter of carnival rides, shrieking crowds and spruikers, underscored by contemporary Indonesian experimental music.

Pasar Malam launched in Yogyakarta in May 2025 followed by a showing in Semarang. From 2026 to 2027 it will tour Australia, with the Northern Centre of Contemporary Art in Darwin as the first of 7 venues on the national tour.

A unique Indonesian/Australian collaboration, Pasar Malam invites artists in each country to work with one of

Indonesia’s leading printmaking studios to realise their visions. In so doing the exhibition reveals a range of

creative response to Indonesian society and culture since independence in 1945, while simultaneously

repressed fears, desires and histories relevant to people of all countries and nationalities.

Australian artists

Amina McConville | Ida Lawrence | Jumaadi | Leyla Stevens | Malcolm Smith | Tobias Richardson

Indonesian artists

Alfin Agnuba | Enka Komariah | Ipeh Nur | Prihatmoko Moki | Restu Ratnaningtyas | Rizqi Maulana

Rudi Hermawan | Tamarra | Timoteus Anggawan Kusno

LAUNCH: 6pm, Thursday 12 February

EXHIBITION: 13 February - 11 April 2026

PUBLIC PROGRAMING: 

Pasar Malam floortalk with Malcolm Smith & Rudi Hermawan 

 NCCA

10am, Saturday 14 February

Join Exhibition Producer Malcolm Smith at the Northern Centre of Contemporary Art, Parap (NCCA), for a guided tour of Pasar Malam, an exciting exhibition developed by Krack! studio in partnership with 16albermarle Project Space and brought to Darwin NCCA and MAGNT.

Free entry

RSVP here

In Conversation | Collecting Contemporary Southeast Asian Art

MAGNT

2pm, Saturday Feb 14 February

An exciting opportunity to join two of Australia’s leading private collectors of contemporary art from Southeast Asia, John Cruthers and Stephen Shaul, in conversation with MAGNT Curator of Southeast Asian Art, Emily Collins. The collectors will share their experiences and expertise and discuss hot trends emerging from the Southeast Asian art scene today.

John Cruthers opened 16albermarle Project Space in Sydney in 2019 to present recent works by Southeast Asian artists to Australian audiences and his gallery is touring the exhibition Pasar Malam | Night Market: Contemporary Printmaking from Indonesia and Australia to Darwin.

Stephen Shaul is a specialist in contemporary Indonesian art and the generous donor of the Shaul Collection of Contemporary Indonesian Art to MAGNT.

The In Conversation is part of the public programs developed by MAGNT for the exhibition Pasar Malam | Night Market: Contemporary Printmaking from Indonesia and Australia at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in Parap from 13 February - 11 April.

Free entry | Limited places

Book here