More information on the 15 Artists prize and exhibition can be found online here.
Robert Andrew, held within a voice, 2023
Rocks, burnt branches, shell, ochre, oxides, string, aluminium, and electromechanical components
Yawuru artist Robert Andrew’s work combines programmable machinery with earth pigments, ochres, and rocks to mine historical events and cultural knowledge that has been denied or distanced by the dominant paradigms of western culture. held within a voice articulates the intertwined relationship of language and Country by visualising the wavelengths of Yawuru Ngan-ga (Yawuru Language) with gradually evolving natural elements. Burnt branches, rocks, and shell are suspended on strings attached to custom-built mechanisms their choreography is based on intonations of spoken language. With each movement a new landscape of language is inscribed onto the gallery wall.
Photo courtesy of City of Moreton Bay. Photographed by Louis Lim. Images: Louis Lim
Image: Robert Andrew, between language and country, 2023. Exhibition: Dark Matters, 2023, Science Gallery. Photography: Alan Weedon, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
2023 PICA Fundraiser
a connective reveal—moondang dandjoo koorliny, 2023
Ochre, oxides, and chalks on calcium carbonate. 60 x 40cm. Edition of 40 + 2 AP
Robert Andrew is a descendant of the Yawuru people. Yawuru Country is the lands and waters surrounding Rubibi (the town of Broome) area in the Kimberley Region, Western Australia. PICA is on the lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation. Andrew consulted with Whadjuk Traditional Owner Elisha Jacobs-Smith who gifted language to this work. ‘moondang dandjoo koorliny’—everything moving together’
Andrew’s work often combines programmable machinery with earth pigments and language. a connective reveal—moondang dandjoo koorliny was formed using a mechanism that precisely projects water onto a prepared surface. The mechanism directed by language slowly etches back through stratums of white chalks into ochres and oxides. The ochre red flows from beneath the white surface and onto the stark black canvas—building new typographies reminiscent of the shifting landscape and moving waters of this Country. The gradual build-up and pooling of colours bring forward new stories informed by each mineral layer of the work.
2023 Wharf St Public Artwork
Digital Ceramic Print on Glass, Cast Bronze. Project Managed by Urban Art Projects, for the facade windows of the Australian Taxation Office, 152 Wharf St, Brisbane.
The distinctive horizontal forms on the windows of 152 Wharf Street are created with a custom-built painting armature that uses water to erode through stratums of white chalks into ochres and oxides. The gradual build-up and pooling of colours bring forward new stories and typographies informed by each mineral layer of the work. The organic lines envisage a timeline of history—alike the lines of stratification in sandstone, or nearby Brisbane Tuff typical to this area. These ancient knowledge systems embedded in the earth both record and shape our movement across Country.
2023 PICA SOLO
Presented in associated in Perth Festival
Held within a word by Meanjin (Brisbane)-based artist Robert Andrew combines kinetic installations with programmable technologies and natural materials such as wood, stone, ochres and soil. A descendant of the Yawuru people whose Country is of the Broome region of the Kimberley, Western Australia, Andrew’s installations are expressions of experiences deeply rooted in his own family’s history and his ongoing recovery of knowledge about his family and identity.
Aboriginal languages occupy a central place in Andrew’s work and for his new installation at PICA he treats the gallery walls as a writing surface. Over several weeks, suspended objects move and interact to create an ever-evolving, ever-building ‘landscape’. The movements of strings, rocks and charcoal follow a pattern directed by words in Noongar that are slowly outlined on a mechanical plotter. The resulting gestural ‘topography’ bears no trace of the text that drives its formation yet is inherently embedded in ancient knowledge systems.
Robert Andrew challenges the use of the English language, and the act of writing itself, as a colonial tool, relinquishing control to produce artworks that embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. In the artist’s own words, ‘I do this to claim my language and to tell stories in my own way.’ Through a complex choreographing of mechanisms and materials, he creates visual, aural and linguistic experiences that forge new connections between image and text, language and identity, history and now.
Images: Exhibition view: Robert Andrew ‘Held within a word’ Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
Yawuru artist Robert Andrew’s writing machine gradually reveals a phrase in the language of the Traditional Custodians of the Kamberri/Canberra region over the course of its exhibition in Ceremony. Employing open-source, programmable technologies, the time-based installation slowly exposes words on an ochre-painted wall by eroding the outer layer of white chalk.
‘Nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura’ (taking care of ceremonial ground) was gifted to Andrew following his close consultation with Paul Girrawah House, son of Ngambri-Ngunnawal Elder Dr Matilda House, Traditional Custodian of the land on which the National Gallery is located, to identify a phrase with special significance to this place.
Andrew’s use of ochre is a key element of his kinetic sculptures for both its ceremonial significance to First Nations people and its mineral nature. In the palimpsest works, an ochre substrate is revealed by the writing machine, speaking to the concealed histories of First Nations peoples and their experience of colonisation on this continent. Andrew says,
It’s part of that revealing of history, and uncovering. For me, it’s not that idea of completely taking it off, it’s about creating a new image. And it’s not there to translate the word that is revealed; it’s there to give that word a different texture, a different space in which it exists.
In disrupting the white surface and showing the red ochre underneath, Andrew gestures to the ever-present and culturally invested landscape of Aboriginal land beneath the topography of modern Australia.
Robert Andrew’s A connective reveal—nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura was created in consultation with Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri-Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians
2022 Biennale of Sydney
Robert Andrew Water waking Country – Wulani yinamirlgan buru, 2022 – ongoing.
Ochres, oxides, chalk, aluminium, and electromechanical components. Dimensions variable.
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from the Australia Council for the Arts. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photography: Document Photography.
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Asad Raza, and Warraba Weatherall
More information about the exhibition can be found online here.
ROBERT ANDREW
Moving beyond the line, 2022.
Book, water, aluminium, ochre, and electromechanical components. 360 x 80 x 60cm.
Robert Andrew’s practice unearths histories that have previously been denied or forgotten—constructing a foundation or knowledge system to move forward and build on. Andrew’s works reflect his personal relationship to land, culture and language, as well as wider narratives related to the encounter between Indigenous and colonial cultural heritages.
Knowledge systems are neither fixed nor fully predictable—each word can erode, build, and direct the path of history. Moving beyond the line mines cultural histories to uncover how the written word impacted the course of Andrew’s familial lineage. A constant slow drip erodes the principles expressed in A.O Neville’s publication ‘Australia’s Coloured Minority: Its Place in the Community’ (1947). Neville was Western Australia’s Chief Protector of the Aborigines 1915–1936. Each word expresses and builds political and philosophical systems that directed and controlled the families, livelihoods, and the formation of history. This process obscures and reclaims these histories, re-inserting First Nations voices overwhelming the written word with ancient minerals to build new imagery in the pooled residues of ochre and ink.