Robert Andrew
Learning Resource
Robert Andrew, Yawuru people, A connective reveal—nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura, 2022, installation view, 4thNational Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2022, created in consultation with Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri-Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians, purchased 2021 in celebration of the National Gallery of Australia’s 40th anniversary, 2022 © the artist
Through my early research, I realised the loss of culture through translation of language and the overlaying of English language in Indigenous culture. There was this idea that the printed word had power in it over everything else… It was a colonising tool, to use language, and take someone’s language away, and have the written word direct them.1
Robert Andrew
A connective reveal—nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura
Robert Andrew, Yawuru people, A connective reveal—nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura, 2022, installation view, 4thNational Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2022, created in consultation with Dr Matilda House and Paul Girrawah House, Ngambri-Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians, purchased 2021 in celebration of the National Gallery of Australia’s 40th anniversary, 2022 © the artist
Robert Andrew, Yawuru people, artist’s studio, Meanjin/Brisbane, Queensland, 2022, image courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery © the artist, photograph: Agi Davis
Yawuru artist Robert Andrew’s writing machine gradually reveals a phrase in the language of Traditional Custodians of the Kamberri/Canberra region over the course of its exhibition. 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.1
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 his A connective reveal series, 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.1
This is the reason I do the time-based works. They don’t really end. There’s just a position where the work stops at that stage…There is gathering, and there’s knowledge that’s imparted through this process, but it’s not the end of that knowledge.1
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. The invitation here is to return to the work time and time again as each viewing reveals more of what's hidden.
The sense of time and duration activated in Andrew’s work subversively responds to archaic assumptions associated with First Nations languages, cultures, identities and histories. These stories are not changeless, static, cemented in time or forever bound to the past. Rather, like Andrew’s mechanisms, they are in a constant state of motion, innovation and revelation, allowing new meanings to be made and new truths to be told.2
It is still readable as text and language, but it becomes something different. The ochres bleed down onto the floor space and create a landscape over time... So it’s that idea of also creating new spaces within that scraping back, of bringing new things forward. It’s not about erasing, it’s about exposing.1
Robert Andrew
Robert Andrew is a descendant of the Yawuru people, whose Country is the lands and waters of the Broome area in the Kimberley Region, Western Australia. Andrew was born in 1965 in Boorloo/Perth and lives and works in Meanjin/Brisbane. Robert Andrew’s work investigates the personal and family histories that have been denied or forgotten. His work speaks to the past yet articulates a contemporary relationship to his Country—using technology to make visible the interconnecting spiritual, cultural, physical, and historical relationships with the land, waters, sky, and all living things.³
Part of my art practice, and part of why I went to university, was because I did not know a lot about my family’s history. These uncoverings and scraping back through layers and understanding certain histories that I was told at school, and how misaligned they were to Indigenous histories and my family’s histories, gave me insight into my own family.’
I use either a Yawuru word or words that are connected to the Country the work is exhibited on. It’s a complex process, because I don’t step into the process with anything in mind for the particular work, and I like to start a conversation [with Traditional Custodians] without being too directive. You begin to understand more laterally about the Country and the people and the language that you’re working with.1
Provocations
- Robert Andrew’s A connective reveal—nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura is a kinetic, time-based work of art. What do these terms mean to you, and how might they shape the way that audiences’ experience or engage with this work of art?
- Reflecting on the quotes from Robert Andrew, what meanings might the dimension of time lend to his work?
- Written language has complex and significant implications for Andrew, why do you think he has chosen language and text as a key component of his work? How might his use of language relate to, or challenge, his audience?
- Considering that the text in A connective reveal—nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura is revealed very gradually over the duration of the exhibition, how do you think the legibility or illegibility of the phrase would change your experience and desire to interact with the work at different points in time?
Prompts
- A desire to understand and reveal hidden or denied histories, has been a starting point for Robert Andrew’s research. What role does research and knowledge play in your own artistic practice and process?
- How might the artists invitation to return to the work time and time again change the experience and engagement for the audience?
- How does the dimension of time relate to the concepts that you’re exploring in your own art making? How could a consideration of time enhance or alter your artistic process, display or audience engagement? In what ways could you investigate or incorporate time as a factor in your work?
- Collaboration with local Custodians informed the direction of A connective reveal—nainmurra guuruburrii dhaura. In the conception of this work Andrew considered the specific site and Country on which it would be exhibited. In what ways have you, or could you, consider the relevance or responsiveness of your own work to the place/s in which it is created or displayed?
