I recently stumbled across Making the Empire Cross by Brisbane artist Priscilla Bracks. Her practice explores the human condition and world we inhabit. She is especially interested in chaos, change, the patterns chaos creates, and the way these factors impact upon personal, social and national identities.

"After the commencement of the Afghanistan war, I was not sure whether I should be more disturbed by the war itself, or the abundance of cheap war toys which seemed to flood the market at that time. My response was to collect them over a period now spanning 4 years. Gradually they formed the basis for this work, the darker side of which ponders the ways in which popular culture and media have been used to make the case for a conflict which is relatively unsupported outside fundamentally conservative communities (of all religious persuasions). Yet despite its black humor, it is my hope that the work is not heavy handed or angry." Priscilla Bracks.