Banjo

Banjo is a new animation project as part of the Edge Of Elsewhere exhibition, working with Imagi Studios, Hong Kong. The project is in development for 2012 with Cambeltown City Art Gallery and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney.

The work will include large scale photographic images researched from the artists personal history and images drawn from the Berndt Museum, University of Western Australia and the Battye Library, Perth.

The story of Banjo and his friends starts from Banjo’s journey from 1970′s Western Sydney to the past of 1910 to Western New South Wales and Broome, Western Australia. This is a children’s ghost story about Aboriginal customs, histories of cultural disruption:

This adventure follows Banjo and his dragonfly friend Ngalan on a tale through dreams and time. A story of love and sadness filled with knowing animal spirits, historical truths from ocean to an inland river, a gravesite, and a deep family secret.

Ancestral Worship   21st Century: Art in the First Decade

18 December, 2010 – 26 April, 2011 Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Words by Julie Ewington, Curator Australia Art. GOMA.

For Ancestral worship 2010, commissioned for this exhibition, Andrew [places] images of people from post-cards collected over 15 years, now inserted into the present [onto the relaxed deck-chair]. These post-cards or cartes de visite were used for tourism, exotic display or personal use in Australia and other colonised countriesand show details of their original settings. As you see, all but one is within a domestic Western context but Andrew is interested in spaces between exotic/other and civilized: the portrait of the young European women was found on a Melbourne street, discarded and crinkled.

The work is a warrior’s challenge, of a sort: one can sit beside the images of these dignified people from the past, rather than on them: the choice is ours. Andrew sees the portraits as ‘ancestors’ or  ‘gods’ – here, now, possibly sunning themselves alongside us, gracing us or haunting us with their presence. These exquisite faces remind us how often our shared humanity is betrayed. It’s a provocation set under playful, though arguably, ceremonial trees, in a fool’s paradise perhaps, but importantly it is also a memorial to our ancestors – whatever their origins.

Brook has worked with master woodblock carver and printer Kitamura Shiochi from Kyoto. Kitamura is working in Brooks studio in Melbourne throughout late October and November 2009.

This new work is part of the print exhibition ‘Danger Of Authority’ at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne in November-December 2009.

In May 2009, DETACHED resident artist Brook Andrew begun an 8 month community interactive archive and study space linking ideas of war with both the personal and popular. 8 Months Of War presents eight display cabinets presenting a snap shot of real time from May through to December 2009. After all, when are ‘we’ not at war?

The artist sees the site of DETACHED in a renovated colonial church as a sacred place for thinking about conflict and a place to ponder and reflect. In many ways, this project is a memorial in a site of religious history. Some who visit may bring flowers to lay at the entrance of the installation or light a candle in memory. Then proceed to the mezzanine levels and add to the growing public archive.

The basis of this ongoing experimental work in progress aims for the public to assist in providing both the materials and activism and growth of this installation/performance. Ranging from two dimensional archives that include photocopied, photographic and books connecting different cultures and expressions of war and conflict. MAY has begun and expresses the popular Gallipoli, the mainly unknown historical Military conflicts like The Black Line in Tasmania, tourism newspaper advertising of the pyramids link with First World War photographs of troops on camel trips and the pyramids, to current tabloid articles on conflict comparing footballers and women to the Taliban. Red string is used as a hyper-link connecting ideas, i.e. a photographic portrait from an early settler family in Tasmania to photocopied images of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger and the Franklin Dam demonstration slogans.

The aim: you, the public, enter DETACHED and join the dots, forming your own connections as you like. Sit and think and comment, write a message, post a family portrait on the wall or write a story then cut a length of red string; link one idea to another, trace a line through space. 8 Months Of War is after all a metaphor for the ongoing trials of disaster through passions inflicted on our fellow human beings, animals and planet alike. The end may be a sea of red cotton cutting lines through the visitors’ multitude personal comments. The red cotton creating a mind field or barbed wire, encircling the thought of war. And below on the ground level, lay reefs, flowers and light a candle in commemoration or protest.

Visit:

http://www.detached.com.au/

http://www.8monthsofwar.com   :    Web site launched July 2009

The Island I, 2008

250x300x5cm. Mixed media on Belgian Linen.

The following images document the making process of The Island series. 

Brook made the series with Melbourne based master screen printer Stewart Russell, formally of the London Print Works, and Bonnie Ashley, with assistance by Trent Walter and Louise Patrick.

Stewart and Bonnie

Bonnie

Stewart, Bonnie and Trent

Stewart, Bonnie and Brook

Stewart and Trent

Brook

Brook