Brook Andrew

Born 1970, Sydney (Wiradjuri/Celtic)
Bachelor Visual Arts
Graduation show: 1993

Artworks in Space YZ

White Word I, 1993
Vinyl letters on velvet
2 parts: each 210 x 155 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art,
gift of the artist, 1995

Naraga Yarmble, Bungle-gara-gara, 1993/2021
Banner
160 x 1280 cm
Collection of the artist

Inspirational artists and thinkers such as Anne Graham, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Geoffrey Batchen, Jennifer Barrett, Vivian Johnson and many more involved with UWS at different times, have had a large mark on my creative world and how I have continued to practice as an artist and thinker. The Indigenous Unit and connecting with my local community was also a very present and culturally significant aspect of my time studying at UWS between 1991-1993.

One of the great memories of studying art at UWS is that we were lucky to be away from Sydney as a central art world - which assisted in original thought and less pressure to conform to a city trend. One subject I studied was called Interdisciplinary Studies which back then was pretty radical - it broke the conventions of usual art school disciplines. In fact, at first we were ridiculed as being part of this subject because we were seen as artists that were not focusing on one medium such as painting. This subject helped me graduate in Photography but my final work was conceptual and installation based with no photography at all!

I was always impressed by the teaching cohort's dedication to travel out to the west of Sydney and commit their time and share their experimental and sometimes radical ideas on how to get us to think differently - trade secrets that would probably be looked down upon today in teaching circles and university guidelines.

Brook Andrew is an interdisciplinary artist who examines dominant narratives, often related to histories of colonialism and modernity. His art practice, including museum interventions and curatorial projects, aims to make neglected stories visible and offer alternative choices for interpreting history in the world today. Apart from drawing inspiration from vernacular objects and the archive he travels internationally to work with communities and various private and public collections.

The rich, research-based interventions and artworks of Brook Andrew have been presented in exhibitions nationally and internationally since 1996. Recent exhibitions were held at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), Milan; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, Croatia; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, Geneva; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. In 2017, his distinguished 25-year career was recognised with a large-scale, immersive solo exhibition, The Right to Offend is Sacred at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

In 2018, Brook Andrew completed a year-long Australia Council International Residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin where he reflected on the complexity of memory sites in Germany. In 2019, he concluded an ambitious, three-year-long Australian Research Council grant, Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial. This project was designed to respond to the repeated high-level calls for a national memorial to Aboriginal loss and the frontier wars. In 2017, Brook Andrew was the recipient of the prestigious Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and in 2015, was appointed Photography Residencies Laureate at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

Brook Andrew was the Artistic Director of NIRIN, 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020). He is currently 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. Brook Andrew was recently awarded the 2020 Australia Council Award for Visual Arts. 

See more from Brook at his website and Instagram. He is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.