Brook ANDREW

ARTS LAB PROVOCATEUR 2016

Brook Andrew is known for his investigation of dominant Western narratives, specifically relating to colonialism, placing Australia at the centre of a global inquisition. Apart from drawing inspiration from vernacular objects and the archive Andrew travels internationally to work with communities and various private and public collections. Creating interdisciplinary works and immersive installations Andrew presents viewers with alternative choices for interpreting the world, both individually and collectively, by intervening, expanding and re-framing history and our inheritance. These perspectives are driven by his rich involvement with international and local research practice and his cultural inheritance of Wiradjuri, Ngunnawal and Celtic ancestry growing up in Australia’s Sydney area.

In 2014 Andrew worked closely with the collections of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Museo de América and Museo Nacional de Antropología for the exhibition Really Useful Knowledge (Un Saber Realmente Until) curated by WHW (What, How and for Whom). This rigorous collaboration produced the work A Solid Memory of the Forgotten Plains of our Trash and Obsessions, an immersive two-room installation.

Andrew was awarded the inaugural Sidney Myer Fellowship for 2012/13 and the exclusive Katherine Hannay Australian Visual Arts Commission for an ambitious installation of film and sculpture called De Anima. This work, presented as part of The Cinemas Project, addresses the use of propaganda in cinema. After debuting at Bendigo Art Gallery in 2014, De Anima was shown at RMIT Design Hub and continues to tour Australia as part of RECHARGE: The Experimenta 6th International Biennial of Media Art.

Andrew, with collaborator Trent Walter, was awarded the 2013/14 Georges Mora Foundation Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria, Australia. In 2013, he created a new site-specific installation informed by the collections of the Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France, for Vivid Memories: An Aboriginal Art History.

Andrew curated TABOO in 2012/13 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney: a turning point in how indigenous and non-indigenous artists and themes are expressed, pigeonholed and determined through stereotyping in colonized societies.

In 2012, Andrew contributed three significant, permanent private and public artworks: Warrang, for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; mountain home – dhirrayn ngurang for Australia House as part of the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, Japan; and WITNESS for the Lyon Housemuseum, Melbourne. In 2016 a new work will be unveiled for Rhodes Peninsula, the City of Canada Bay, Sydney.

Significant solo exhibitions for 2015 include Sanctuary: The Tombs of the Outcasts, at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne; and EVIDENCE, an immersive interdisciplinary artwork that reflects on and incorporates the rich and political collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney. The theme ‘evidence’ is taken in response to the Victoria & Albert Museum’s traveling exhibition Disobedience.