There’s a red dust here in Mparntwe that gets into everything. It’s a fine, ancient powder that stains your boots and lingers in the air, a world away from the humid, monsoon-scented breeze of the Tonlé Sap. Yet, as I stand here in the heart of Australia, surrounded by the stark, breathtaking expanse of the desert, the spirit of Cambodia feels palpably close. It’s a connection that transcends geography, forged in the shared languages of rock ‘n’ roll, pop art, and the stubborn resilience of culture. This is a dispatch from the red centre, a tale of two temples—one of stone, one of sand—and the strange, beautiful echoes between them.
This Friday night, we’re making those echoes tangible. At the Art Shed in Alice Springs, we’re staging a collision of worlds we’re calling ‘Angkor Wat to Alice Springs’. It’s a pop-up exhibition of my Sticky Fingers Art Prints, a series of screen prints that are my own psychedelic ode to Cambodia’s Golden Era. The air won’t be filled with the usual gallery chatter; it’ll be thick with the sizzle of Kek Soon’s Cambodian kitchen—Aussie BBQ style—freshly cooked num pang sandwiches and aromatic curries—and the soundtrack will be the glorious, fuzztone-drenched wail of Ros Sereysothea and Sinn Sisamouth and the grooviness of Cambodia’s Golden Era rock’n’roll.
The Story Behind the Print: “Mara” by Sticky Fingers Art Prints
The “Mara” print is a vibrant piece of psychedelic Cambodian pop art that commemorates a remarkable, almost-forgotten moment of cultural intersection. The artwork pays homage to the dancer Mara, a Cambodian artist who performed in New York City in the early 1950s.
History records that a young art student named Andy Warhol (né Andrej Varhola, Jr.), who was deeply immersed in the New York dance scene at the time, sketched Mara during her performances. Julien Poulson’s print revives this obscure historical footnote, reimagining it through a lens of Cambodian retro-futurism.
By featuring Mara, the print connects two distinct artistic worlds: the golden age of Cambodian performance and the nascent pop art movement in America. It celebrates a fleeting encounter between East and West, past and present, making it a centerpiece of the Sticky Fingers Art Prints collection and a testament to the enduring, interconnected spirit of global art.
This is the outback. It’s a world of community initiatives and handmade ethos, a spirit that mirrors our own work at the Fish Island Community Arts Centre (FICAC) in Kampot. The town of Alice itself feels like an island, an oasis of creativity surrounded by an ocean of desert. So, it feels right to be here, launching a new Kickstarter campaign to build a dance studio back in Cambodia. Selling these prints isn’t just about art; it’s about laying bricks and mortar for the next generation. It’s a long burn, a five-year vision for FICAC coming to life, aiming to bring young Cambodian performers to Australia in a new CSP production by 2027.
The prints themselves are alive with stories, ghosts from the past dancing into a vibrant new future, all part of the astonishing cultural revival happening in Cambodia. I’m chuffed with the 2nd edition of the “Mara” print, which connects a Cambodian dancer to Andy Warhol in 1950s New York. But the central ghost for me is Austrlian artist Martin Sharp. In the 1960s, while Cambodia was in the throes of its own pop explosion, Sharp was wandering the ruins of Angkor. He saw the stone faces of the Bayon temple being embraced, almost consumed, by the roots of strangler figs. That image of ancient art fused with relentless nature burned onto his retina and directly inspired the iconic, swirling cover for Cream’s Disraeli Gears. So, as it seems, I’m not the first Aussie pop artist to take great inspiration from all things Cambodia! but proud to be following in the footsteps of some of the greats.
I often wonder if Sharp, a man with ears as sharp as his eyes, caught a stray blast of Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll from a Phnom Penh radio. Could he have ever imagined that his pop art would, decades later, inspire the visual identity of a band dedicated to reviving the very scene he might have inadvertently brushed past? That Sixties pop art spirit—bold, colourful, and unafraid—is absolutely part of our Cambodian Space Project revival today. Dive into more on the Sharp Cambodian connection here:
This thread of synchronicity pulls even tighter. I’ve always fancied the idea of the CSP as a kind of Velvet Underground out of Cambodia and i’m still a dog with that bone. So, the day Doug Yule of The Velvet Underground turned up at my old KAMA Kafe in a crumbling French colonial building in Kampot was a moment of surreal, full-circle magic. There, in the languid heat, my staff at KAMA cafe snapped a pic of Yule holding a cover of The Velvet Underground album while he told them, “This is my band… and about Warhol’s Factory” perhaps information lost upon the young folks at KAMA but somehow drifting in perfect synergy down the culture flow through the Mekong Delta. The universe, it seems, approves of these connections and our world remains firmly cosmic.
This isn’t my first time in the Centre. I travelled these roads years ago with the heart and soul of the CSP, the incomparable Kak Channthy. We played everywhere—caravan parks, public swimming pools, and most profoundly, at the notorious Berrimah Prison.
That gig was confronting and has never left me. We brought our Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll to a room where 80% of the men were Aboriginal Australians. The shared language was the music itself—a sound of resilience that transcended walls. Channthy was so moved she reworked Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’ into a song about that tour. For me, being back is a chance to continue that conversation. I’m writing new material I call Red Dirt Blues—a sound I’ve dubbed “Desert Twang.”
This work found its most urgent expression at a songwriting workshop I held in the old Alice Springs courthouse, a place with its own heavy ghosts. Only a handful of people turned up on those chilly desert nights, but the ones that did were giants. Among them was Warlpiri Elder Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves. Ned had a message that needed to be a song: “JAILS ARE FULL OF OUR CHILDREN.”
In the shadow of another tragic death in custody, these words are an indictment. We had to act. I threw together a loose band, Red Dirt Blues, and we riffed out a jam to Ned’s powerful Warlpiri lyrics. The result is ‘Karrinjalla Muajarri (Ceasefire!)’, produced by Professor Kinski in Berlin, a veteran of CSP remixes. The track features a fierce rap from Ned’s grandson, Tommy Gunn Hargraves, and we’re releasing a short film, Chanamee Blues, at the Mparntwe Alice Springs International Film Festival in October.
[LINK: Read the ABC News feature on the song]
This is what happens when you show up. You plan a small gathering and end up making a protest song that matters. The Cambodia connection rings loud here, too—it’s in the spirit of using art to speak truth to power.
The music scene here in the Centre is a revelation. It’s been a blast to catch up with musicians like Grant Granites and to discover bands like Honky Tonk Disco and the excellent The Holy Dimes. At the centre of it all is a bloke called Pirate (there always is), who runs the Black Wreath live music venue and the monumental BLACKEN Open Air festival. It’s a thriving, gritty scene.
While it’s a quiet year for the full CSP band, we’re building towards a new live show for 2027. But for now, I’m going back to basics. This December, I’ll point my motorbike back towards Cambodia, travelling light with just my old Tiesco guitar and a few harmonicas. I’ll be singing my Red Dirt Blues in little bars and on street corners, anywhere there’s a cold beer and a good setting for an impromptu boogie. It’s a pilgrimage to gather stories for a memoir about my nine years travelling with Kak Channthy—a book long promised to myself. I’ll be capturing it all on an old Super-8 camera, perhaps for a long, poetic music documentary. The journey from the red dirt of Alice back to the temples of Angkor is the whole point. It’s about finding the rhythm that connects it all. And right now, that rhythm has a definite, glorious, desert twang.
What: Angkor Wat to Alice Springs – A Sticky Fingers Art Print Pop-Up & Fundraiser
When: Friday, [Date], from 5:30 PM.
Where: The Art Shed, 10 Crispe Street, Ciccone, NT.
Why: To launch our Kickstarter for a new Dance Studio at the Fish Island Community Arts Centre (FICAC), Kampot. To eat brilliant food from Kek Soon’s Cambodian Kitchen. To listen to 60s Cambodian psychedelic rock.
Dress Code: 60s inspired gear encouraged, but your best desert boots will do just fine.
Support the FICAC Dance Studio on Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ficac/building-the-dance-studio-and-student-accom-at-ficac-cambodia
Why at dance studio? Builds Professional Pathways and Economic Opportunity: Like our Junior Chef programme, dance is a viable career. A studio allows for structured training, leading to opportunities in performance, teaching, choreography, and the growing cultural tourism sector. This creates tangible economic opportunities from artistic passion, directly combating rural poverty.
Julien Poulson is a musician, artist, and co-founder of The Cambodian Space Project and the Fish Island Community Arts Centre in Kampot, Cambodia. He is currently based between the red desert and the river.