PROSELYTISER, 2000

Private Exhibition of Important Aboriginal Art
Melbourne
11 October 2011
29

BROOK ANDREW

born 1970
PROSELYTISER, 2000

cibachrome print

50.0 x 50.0 cm

edition: 1/5

Provenance

Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 2000

Catalogue text

Brook Andrew is a conceptually driven artist who challenges cultural and historical perception, using installation, text and image to comment on local and global issues regarding race, consumerism and history. He draws inspiration from public media and found archival collections as well as travelling nationally and internationally to work with communities and museum collections creating new work reflecting objects, concepts and local thought.

Andrew uses humour and irony as a tool to displace stereotypes and social complacency. He confronts the invisibility of dominant narratives using glossy images and arresting images that grab our attention and quietly unravel accepted structures with an equally plausible counter narrative. In Proselytiser 2000, the handsome preacher becomes a metaphor for the artist's mission, there to convert us with his blak bible of truths. As Maud Page notes in her 2000 catalogue essay Polemics from the exhibition of the same name she notes, 'The proselytiser is a timeless figure, he stands for many things and is re-contextualised throughout history... His words become revered, he stands for so much to so many people.'1 In Andrew's narrative the proselytiser is the one accepted figure, standing and representing indigenous people. Ironically, his dark skin authenticates his message while at the same time narrowing who is able to speak on behalf of indigenous people.

1. Page, M., Polemics, Exhibition catalogue presented by Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi and The Woolmark 2000, Melbourne Fashion Festival, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 2-3