Brook Andrew

Descended from the Wiradjuri people of south-eastern Australia, Brook Andrew is interested in how Aboriginal people have been depicted by Europeans. In his series AUSTRALIA, Andrew reworks images made in the nineteenth century that focus on the rites and rituals of Aboriginal people from south-eastern Australia and reflect European curiosity.

Andrew reworks drawings originally made by a young German artist Gustav Mützel, who never visited Australia but was commissioned by Prussian naturalist and inveterate traveler William Blandowski. The once-small bookplate images are up-scaled using new screen-printing technology, and printed onto reflective metallic surfaces that speak of the lure and magic associated with Aboriginal culture in the eyes of nineteenth-century Europeans.

'The glittering (precious) gold foil surfaces of the six works in the AUSTRALIA series allude to romantic visions of Aboriginal culture.' Brook Andrew

Source: DARK HEART, Adelaide Biennial, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2013

© Brook Andrew/Copyright Agency, 2018