Room A

TY - ADVS

T1 - Room A

A2 - Andrew, Brook

N1 - 1. Room A Immersive room including sculptures, video work, wall painting, carpet and wall-mounted archival objects and documents. 'Mirror VII', 2017 Closed : 1000 wide x 750 height x 200 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, glass and glue. 'Mirror VIII', 2017 Closed : 1000 wide x 750 height x 200 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, glass and glue. 'Mirror IX', 2017 Closed: 2000 wide, 2215 height x 100 depth Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, glass and glue. The video work 'Interviews III', 2017 is comprised of 4 parts. 3 were inserted into the wall mounted Mirror works, the other appeared in a freestanding Mirror work. Interviews III: Marcia Langton, 2017 Single channel video 30min:29sec Interviews III: Wesley Enoch, 2017 Single channel video 25min:46sec Interviews III: Maxine Briggs, 2017 Single channel video 35min:34sec Interviews III: Lyndon Ormond-Parker, 2017 Single channel video 28min:23sec 2. Mirror Free standing sculptures that intervene in one of the main room of the exhibition The Boomerang Effect. 'Mirror I', 2017 Closed : 2000 wide x 2215 height x 100 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, perspex and glue. 'Mirror II', 2017 Closed : 2000 wide x 2215 height x 100 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, perspex and glue.. 'Mirror III', 2017 Closed : 2000 wide x 2215 height x 100 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, perspex and glue.e. 'Mirror IV', 2017 Closed : 2000 wide x 2215 height x 100 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, perspex and glue. 'Mirror V', 2017 Closed : 2000 wide x 2215 height x 100 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, perspex and glue. 'Mirror VI', 2017 Closed : 2000 wide x 2215 height x 100 depth mm Open: dimensions variable Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper, perspex, TV and glue. 'Habitat I', 2017 1400 wide x 1400 wide x 2140 high Red gum timber, Sapele timber, glass, steel and glue. 'Habitat II', 2017 1400 wide x 1400 wide x 2140 high Red gum timber, Sapele timber, glass, steel and glue 3. Fuselage Nine shelves inserted into the museum display cases. 'Fuselage I', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage II', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage III', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage IV', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage V', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage VI', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage VII', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage VIII', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. 'Fuselage IX', 2017 300mm x 200mm x 100mm Sapele timber, paint, block board, paper and glue. The room featuring a black and white optical pattern is created to immerse the viewer in a contemporary experience, and incorporates video interviews, sculptures, archives and found objects. The pattern is a contemporary rendering of traditional dendroglyph tree carvings. The artist’s intention is to assemble new narratives from seemingly disparate elements that challenge Eurocentric or ignorant attitudes toward Indigenous cultures, and also to illustrate how dominant narratives often misinterpret these cultures. Following this method, the artist has inserted historical material from his personal archive and found objects collected in Geneva to connect and compare cultural and religious protocols in both European and Aboriginal societies. This theme is expanded in the video interviews with Aboriginal experts who give a range of different opinions about cultural protocols. The freestanding sculptures titled, Habitat and Mirror, display postcards and historical objects both from the museum’s and artist’s archives, but also act as a physical barricade to obstruct the experience of the white ‘art cube’ space of the larger exhibition design. Made with sapele timber, a colonial trade timber from Africa which is still in use today, the sculptures are designed to challenge regular museum display and allow for new narratives and ideas to be experienced. The Mirror sculptures are long almost pedagogical structures that house archival material, including objects hand painted by the artist, pasted together and mixed with found materials. This action is deliberate, to align different histories and peoples that are kept separate by the trope of ‘primitivism’ and the powerful gaze of the European colonial machine. Habitat are two sculptures that replicate the traditional curiosity museum cabinet, under a different guise. The artist’s aim is to create a different experience that not only subverts the classificatory mode of the museum cabinet, but enables it to seep and overflow with chaos and mess. This strategy is deliberate, shifting ideas about Aboriginal cultures being stale, authentic and old, when in fact, these cultures are dynamic and alive today. The small shelf sculptures called Fuselage are inserted into the main exhibition as interventions to juxtapose and provoke other meanings and connections with the cultural objects in the museum.

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

M3 - Commissioned or Visual Artwork

PB - Musée d'ethnographie de Genève

CY - Geneva, Switzerland

T2 - The Boomerang Effect: The Aboriginal Arts of Australia

Y2 - 19 May 2017 through 7 January 2018

ER -