National Gallery of Victoria

Brook Andrew is an artist known for questioning the dominant narratives associated with colonialism and modernist histories. Through museum and archival interventions, he challenges stereotypical notions of history, identity and race uncovering neglected and often conflicted histories, and proposes alternative interpretations.

Published by the NGV, Brook Andrew: The Right to Offend is Sacred unpacks the constantly shifting aesthetics and recurring themes of Andrew’s art practice over his twenty-five-year career.

Speakers

Brook Andrew is an artist who has exhibited internationally since 1996 and continues to work and create in major international museums, research centres and galleries. He examines dominant Western narratives, specifically relating to colonialism, placing Australia at the centre of a global inquisition. In doing so, his practice harnesses alternate narratives to assemble new directions of understanding historical legacies of colonialism and modernist histories. Apart from drawing inspiration from vernacular objects and the archive he travels internationally to work with communities and various private and public collections.

Trent Walter is an artist, printer and publisher interested in the intersection of contemporary art and printed matter. In his artwork, Walter combines multiple readymade sources (textual, pictorial and/or sculptural) to explore narrative, history and intersecting time. His workshops reanimate archives through community based screenprinting workshops. Walter was joint recipient, with Brook Andrew, of the 2013–14 Georges Mora Foundation Fellowship, for the project Dual/Duel. Through his studio, Negative Press, Walter commissions artists to create projects made through the lens of expanded print practices.

Moderator

Simon Maidment is Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at NGV, whose recent curatorial projects include, Shut Up and Paint in 2016, Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes in 2015 and solo exhibitions by David Hockney, Subodh Gupta, Richard Mosse and Ryan Trecartin. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the Centre for Ideas, VCA, University of Melbourne. His research uses curatorial practice as a method to investigate art’s potential to influence social and political change.