Brook Andrew is an Australian Wiradjuri/Celtic artist and writer.
2023 year exhibited in Biennial Find out more
Andrew is Enterprise Professor Interdisciplinary Practice and Director of Reimagining Museums and Collections at the University of Melbourne.
His interdisciplinary practice is driven by the collisions of intertwined narratives, often emerging from the mess of the “Colonial Wuba (hole)”. His practice is grounded in his perspective as a Wiradjuri and Celtic person with matrilineal kinship from the kalar midday (land of the three rivers), Australia.
Brook’s artworks, research, leadership roles and curatorial projects challenge the limitations imposed by power structures, historical amnesia and complicity to centre and support Indigenous ways of being through systemic change and yindyamarra (respect, honour, go slow and responsibility).
Liverpool Biennial 2023
SMASH IT (2018)
Brook Andrew’s ‘SMASH IT’ (2018) is a digital amalgamation of images, videos, sound and text. Archival film from the Smithsonian Institute collides with found footage and media samples from the artist’s collection. Andrew co-opts and reframes ethnographic photographs, newspaper extracts, film footage and other cultural objects to dismantle racist stereotypes of First Nations people. The work complicates colonial archives and their embedded ideologies by repurposing archival materials to subvert dominant narratives. Throughout, interviews with prominent Australian Indigenous intellectuals, including Marcia Langton, Wesley Enoch and Maxine Briggs, are juxtaposed against imagery of demolished and defaced Western statuary and monuments to colonial power. In its cacophony of voices and materials, ‘SMASH IT’ brings colonial archives into conversation with the present moment, inviting
Brook Andrew’s ‘SMASH IT’ (2018) is a digital amalgamation of images, videos, sound and text. Archival film from the Smithsonian Institute collides with found footage and media samples from the artist’s collection. Andrew co-opts and reframes ethnographic photographs, newspaper extracts, film footage and other cultural objects to dismantle racist stereotypes of First Nations people. The work complicates colonial archives and their embedded ideologies by repurposing archival materials to subvert dominant narratives. Throughout, interviews with prominent Australian Indigenous intellectuals, including Marcia Langton, Wesley Enoch and Maxine Briggs, are juxtaposed against imagery of demolished and defaced Western statuary and monuments to colonial power. In its cacophony of voices and materials, ‘SMASH IT’ brings colonial archives into conversation with the present moment, inviting us to consider their contemporary legacies and international relevance. Showing at World Museum
SMASH IT (2018)
Showing at World Museum
Tuesday to Sunday 10.00am-5:00pm
