PARIS.- Galerie Nathalie Obadia is presenting ngayy ngajuu dhugul birra (to see my skin broken), the fourth exhibition by Brook Andrew since the Australian Wiradjuri artist began his collaboration with the gallery in 2014.
Born in Sydney in 1970, Brook Andrew’s matrilineal kinship is from the Wiradjuri Aboriginal nation of western New South Wales, Australia, and he conceptualises his practice through the Wiradjuri language. Brook Andrew is considered a major player in the contemporary art and museum scene, whose work has gained international amplitude over a nearly 30-year career. His practice questions the memory of colonialism and presents alternative histories. His artworks, museum interventions and curatorial projects challenge the limitations imposed by power structures, historical amnesia and stereotyping, to centre Indigenous perspectives. Drawing inspiration from vernacular objects and the archive, he collaborates internationally with artists, communities, and various private and public collections. From this powerful work, alternative approaches to understanding history emerge in order to «de- colonize» it.
As Brook Andrew has expressed: “The paintings and sculptures in this installation create a mise-en-scene of continuing culture and new imaginings, presenting the complicated and broken processes of accessing and piecing together our objects held in museums. This installation creates a safe space and exercise in healing and radical self- love in a ceremonial scene that is free from the mistreatment, misinterpretation and romanticism inflicted upon our cultures. The paintings are inspired by patterns from our marrara guulany (tree carvings/dendroglyphs) and along with the totems and entire mise-en-scene present the power of process, regeneration, and this complex journey. The sculpture garru (magpie) is based on my personal totem. You will notice it appears to be broken, like other sculptural and painted elements in the installation which are cut, collapsed, broken, or opened-up. The concept of broken skin refers to, Aboriginal ‘skin connections’ (kin and family), and the literal broken skin of bodies and of our objects in museums. My act of assembling for this new body work is about active healing and finding new ways of creating ceremony today. These totem figures are also inspired and linked to characters in the theatre script ‘GABAN’ (strange) which will be performed this September at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.
My installation challenges current methods of displaying Aboriginal cultural materials in museums which are presented out of context from a vast geographical range. These displays misrepresent the cultural and linguistic diversity with a deep lack of understanding of Aboriginal society and ongoing practices - museums often represent our cultures as broken and incomplete, as if we and our cultures are broken and have little contemporary importance.”
ngayy ngajuu dhugul birra (to see my skin broken), is inspired and driven by the complexities of collisions between the lived experiences of Wiradjuri culture and Indigenous ways of knowing with the institutionalisation of the museum and public space. A mise-en-scene ceremonial space of totems, relics, mandalas in ceramic, wood, neon, stone and marble welcome us along with eight works on canvas from the Seeing Time series.
The works on canvas in the Seeing Time series evoke the question of time, its perception and its manipulation. With contemplative and reflexive vocations, the space of the painting opens for an experimentation, an inscription in this infinite measure. For Artforum (January 2022) Helen Hughes also observes that «this turn to abstraction may reflect the sense in which, in 2021 as opposed to earlier in the artist’s career, all the world’s museums now appear to be striving to decolonize, thereby allowing Andrew to zoom out and capture a bigger picture». The black and white Wiradjuri motif is directly inspired by the artist’s Aboriginal (Wiradjuri) heritage; the abstract form speaks to the strength and continuity of this cultural practice that has permeated his work since the beginning.
The spatial and temporal disorientation of this entire scene is volatile, the supports of certain elements slip away to consider new juxtapositions and assemblies of deeply personal histories that Brook Andrew binds together.
Brook Andrew was Artistic Director of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney in 2020 and participated in UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA at the Seoul Museum of Art & Artspace in 2021-22. He is part of the curatorial team for On Caring, Repairing and Healing at Gropius Bau, Berlin, where he will also present works this September and is regularly featured in the prestigious The Power 100: the Most Influential People in the Artworld, by the British magazine Art Review.
Brook Andrew observes a patient work of research with communities and museums via meticulously research and collaborations, invitations and residencies in museums and universities, notably ethnological and anthropological (Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in 2016, Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève in 2017, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington in 2017). Many of his works, installations and commemorations address the issue of museum holdings and restitution, and include archival material (books, postcards, objects) of which Brook Andrew has, over time, built up a very extensive collection.
Laureate of the Explora Foundation, which allows him to carry out a residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris, Brook Andrew has initiated local collaborations for this exhibition, notably in the ceramic studio with Émile Degorce Dumas and his assistants Clotilde Chirol Perrain and Ninon Enea, stone artist and sculptor Vincent Voillat, wood craft and carpenter Mark Jackson. Brook Andrew’s collaborators in Australia include Cherie Schweitzer, Jessica Neath and Stewart Russel.
Born in 1970 in Sydney, Australia. Lives and works internationally.
Brook has a BFA, University of Western Sydney (1990-1993), a Master of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (1998-1999), and a DPhil from Oxford University, UK (2017-2021). Brook Andrew is one of the most recognized contemporary artists in the Australian and Asia-Pacific art scene. Brook Andrew was the Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney in 2020.
In 2023, Brook Andrew will participate in the First Indigenous Triennial in Taiwan, the Sharjah Biennale and Revisiting solidarity collection from MOCA Skopje, curated by WHW (What, How and for Whom) at the Kunsthalle Vienna, Austria. His work is currently exhibited in Hurting and Healing: Let’s Imagine a Different Heritage at the Tensta Konsthall in Spånga, Sweden.
Recent solo exhibitions include, Inside the Depths of the Unknown - A New Line of Interpretation as part of Deviant Practice at the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (The Netherlands, 2017), Fuselage as part of L’Effet Boomerang at the Musée d’Ethnographie, Geneva (Switzerland, 2017); The Right to Offend is Sacred at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Australia, 2017), EVIDENCE at the Museum of Applied Art and Sciences (MAAS), Sydney (Australia, 2015), Les Trophées Oubliés at the Musée d’ Aquitaine in Bordeaux (France, 2013), Jumping Castle War Memorial at the FeliXartMuseum in Dragenbos (Belgium, 2013), Earth House for Echigo-Tsumari Triennial where he was the national representative of Australia (Japan, 2012). Group exhibitions include Wuzhen International Art Exhibition (China, 2019), Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), Milan (Italy, 2019), and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (Spain, 2014-15).
His work has joined very prestigious private and public collections such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul, South Korea), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, Australia), the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, Australia), the National Portrait Gallery (Canberra, Australia), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia), Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, Australia), Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide, Australia), ARTBANK (Barton, Australia), The Vizard Foundation Collection (Melbourne, Australia), BHP Billiton Collection (Melbourne, Australia).
Brook Andrew was a resident at the Bellagio Center, Rockefeller Foundation, Italy in 2021 and a laureate of the Australia Council Award for Visual Arts in 2020. He was also a recipient of the Australian Research Council (ARC) from 2016-2018 for the project Representation, Remembrance and the Monument, he is currently holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) project with Dr Brian Martin, and was a recipient of the Musée du Quai Branly Photographic Residencies in 2016. In 2017, he benefited from the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship program within the Smithsonian Institute in the United States. From July 2017 to June 2018, Brook Andrew was an Australia Council resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Brook Andrew is Associate Professor in Fine Art, Monash University; Enterprise Professor in Interdisciplinary Practice, University of Melbourne; and a DPhil candidate in the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. He is an Associate Researcher, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford; Honorary Senior Fellow, Indigenous Studies Unit and the School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne; and Associate Research in the Wominjeka Djeembana research lab at MADA, Monash University.
Brook Andrew has been represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels, since 2013.
