As a long-time fan and artist alumni of Cementa, it is an honour to be Lead Curator for the 2024 festival. Being an invited artist in Cementa15 was a career highlight at that time. Socially engaged and site-responsive in focus, the opportunity ignited a network of collaborations across the regional arts landscape, which continue to be productive and inform my work today.
About us
Cementa Inc. is an artist-centred and community-driven regional arts organisation based in Kandos in Central New South Wales (NSW), on Wiradjuri Country.
Our two-year cycle of programming combines community-embedded contemporary practice, First Nations leadership, and strategic initiatives addressing issues relevant to regional communities such as social and economic renewal, land regeneration, and climate resilience. Cementa’s vision connects regional arts communities with peers across Australia, through an annual program of residencies, exhibitions, and special projects, culminating in a flagship biennial festival.
Cementa’s aims are driven by our unwavering commitment, passion, and drive to seed and support a robust and thriving regional arts ecology. We do this by tailoring, testing, and implementing strategies that address the unique challenges and potentials of the regional cultural context, fostering regional artists and community through a breadth of activities that culminate in the most innovative and culturally relevant, regional arts festival in Australia.
Our next festival will be held 17-20 September 2026.
What our network says about us
Cementa is an integral arts link between East & Mid-West creative communities and has proven to have fostered numerous emerging talents. Arguably one of the most egalitarian NSW art events, merging established artists & curators with aspiring new blood, on the traditional homeland of the Dabee (Wiradjuri).
There is no benefit to drawing a hard line in the sand and putting art on one side and community on the other. Cementa is much more complex than that. It’s about culture, opportunity, diversity, inclusion and connection. It’s an opportunity for us to connect, and find others also interested in art, in all its forms. Cementa helps people in regional communities find their people, and we need this. I need this.
Cementa22 opened my eyes to the kindness, generosity and humility of the regional arts community that I struggle to find in Sydney. The festival was a celebration of art in the purest form, people connecting and engaging with each other and with ideas, inclusive of the community and the landscape. It was a bubble I was regretful to emerge from.
I can think of no other art festival that integrates contemporary art with local culture and community in quite the same way. It feels like a blueprint for other regions.
It shines a light on the importance of Australian art outside of institutional settings.
Our people
Alex Wisser
Creative Director
Alex Wisser is an artist and creative producer based in mid-western New South Wales. In 2013 Alex co-founded the Cementa Contemporary Arts Festival and took up permanent residence in the township of Kandos with his family. Since then, his practice has continued to focus on the challenges and opportunities of making art in a regional context. His current practice has included large scale, long term projects like Cementa Festival and Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation, which seek to embed art into a local, regional cultural context.
Laura Baker
Marketing
Laura Baker is a communications and marketing professional and visual artist based living and working on Wiradjuri Country in Central West NSW. Her work spans arts, culture and community, with a focus on storytelling and place-based practice. At Cementa, she supports the festival’s communications with a deep interest in contemporary art shaped by regional context.
Camilla Lawson
Project Manager
For over 25 years, Camilla has built and managed creative spaces for artists, worked as an event manager on music and art festivals, while maintaining her painting, video and performance practice. With a career that began in Darwin and settled in Marrickville, Sydney, Camilla has recently relocated to Kandos. She is excited to join the Cementa production team and looking forward to this year’s dynamic event.
Gabrielle Bates
Data Wrangler, Volunteers Manager, Chief Soup Whisperer
Gabrielle Bates is an interdisciplinary artist now living on Wiradjuri Dabee Land in Kandos, where her practice is closely connected to the region’s creative community. Her recent projects include SCRUM for Cementa24 alongside participatory works developed across NSW with choirs, artists and activists. Gab has contributed to regional arts leadership through youth arts mentorships, curatorial projects, and exhibition coordination at Wayout Artspace. A past project manager for the festival, this time she will be wrangling artist data, coordinating festival volunteers, and acting as Chief Soup Whisperer at the Cementa Festival Office of Rest and Recuperation.
