Two activists known for their headline-grabbing 4/20 demonstrations are shifting their approach this year, arguing a new format will land a harder message with politicians, policymakers, and the broader public.
Over the past decade, Will Stolk and Alex Zammitt have staged a string of attention-grabbing pro-cannabis actions to highlight the failures of prohibition — among them beaming messages onto the Sydney Opera House and driving tanks across the city's harbour bridge.
This 4/20, however, they are taking a markedly different direction — mounting an art exhibition at a Sydney gallery.
The show, held under Stolk and Zammit's 'who are we hurting' movement, will bring together installation-based works and "Banksy-style stuff" intended to "reframe cannabis prohibition through lived experience rather than policy abstraction."
The centrepiece is a detention-style installation featuring a prisoner behind bars, which organisers say will "place audiences inside the consequences of enforcement" and make concrete the reality faced by people charged and penalised for cannabis-related offences.
The wider exhibition opens at Sydney's Gallery Brave on April 18 and examines criminalisation and policing while illustrating what the duo described as the "disconnect between shifting public sentiment and current legal frameworks."
On the decision to change approach, Stolk said: "For the past decade, we've used large-scale stunts to force the conversation into the public eye. This time, we wanted to slow it down and make people sit inside it. An art show lets us hold that tension longer. It's not just something you see in passing, it's something you experience.
"Instead of another headline stunt, we're building something that documents the reality we've been pointing at for years."
Zammitt said the stunts drew attention, but the exhibition would deliver "impact."
"We're taking everything we've learned from being out on the street and putting it into a space where people can't look away. It's more controlled, but it hits harder," he said.
"We didn't want to repeat ourselves this year. A 4/20 show made more sense. It brings people together, creates dialogue, and shows the full scope of what we've been building."
The pair said the exhibition will "bring together 10 years of cultural interventions that have consistently challenged Australia's cannabis laws."
"The work shifts the conversation away from debate and toward lived experience, asking audiences to consider not just the legality of cannabis but the human cost of enforcing its prohibition," they said.
While continuing to push for reform and acknowledging that adult use remains illegal, Zammitt said it was worth pausing to recognise how much had changed.
"When we started this a decade ago, I couldn't have predicted how far cannabis would come," he said. "Today, we have a legal [medical] market, states where you're permitted to drive if you're not impaired, and others where you can grow your own at home.
"While there's still more work to be done, it's important to take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate how far we've come."
The exhibition runs from 6pm on April 18 to 6pm on April 21 at Gallery Brave in Surry Hills.
