Cover Image:  Cranky Pants in collaboration between The Art Gallery of Western Australia and Bruce Asbestos. Cranky Pants installation view, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2026. Artwork © Bruce Asbestos. Photo © Louise Coghill

An explosion of colours and textures greets you as you enter a brightly coloured space filled with larger-than-life comic characters. The room teems with children, busy dressing figurines with different materials. In a corner is a wall of pegs holding a wide variety of supplies, ranging from cardboard helmets to plastic netting, to help visitors create their own costumes. Taking pride of place alongside a giant crocodile is a ‘Catwalk’, lined with black velvety cushions for visitors to model their costumes. The whole atmosphere is playful and inviting, allowing the audience to interact with—and shape—the objects on display.

This is Cranky Pants at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA). The exhibition was created through a nine-month collaboration between UK-based artist Bruce Asbestos and curator Lilly Blue. Known for his larger-than-life pop-art installations, Asbestos centres his work on how visibility, spectacle, and participation shape pop culture. This interactive element is what drew Blue to his work.

_{Bruce Asbestos Tate Modern, Turbine Hall S/S 2025 Nylon Sculpture and Collaborative Catwalk 2025. © Bruce Asbestos. Photo © David Severn.}

About Cranky Pants, he says, “It is the first time I have built a fully immersive environment around a catwalk, and I like that it’s a framework for people to be creative within, rather than confining creativity only to the artist. That has been exciting because it involves giving up some control and allowing the audience to take the work somewhere you cannot fully predict. The work is completed by people.”

With the exhibition expected to run for over a year, both the artist and curator anticipate many changes shaped by public interaction. The exhibition has already proved popular, with over 600 people coming through on some days.

While especially popular with children, engaging adults is “more of a challenge,” according to the curator. “It’s always difficult to curate a play-based experience for all ages because adults are not used to that,” she says. Over the next few weeks, however, they may look at adult-focused events such as ‘Crank n Sip’ to bring more grown-ups into the space and help them connect with their inner child.

As an experience that challenges ‘traditional’ perceptions of art, Cranky Pants offers play and delight.

Cranky Pants opened at AGWA on 28 March and runs until March 2027.