Swinging branches & rocks build up a visible residue
For Tracing inscriptions 2020/22, a purpose-crafted plotter printer is programmed by Robert Andrew to trace an undisclosed Yawuru text in Latin script, activating strings stretching about viewers’ heads that link
to the branches and rocks opposite. With no ink, the traced letters and text are still left invisible and undisclosed to the viewer. The artist seeks to upend the perceived hierarchy concerning composed and oral languages – in this scenario, English and Australian Indigenous languages.
About the system of the exhibition, swinging burnt branches and ochre-protected rocks — suspended by strings controlled by the plotter — bit by bit establish up visible residue on the wall. The charcoal and ochre properly create Nation on to the partitions, reminding viewers that they stand on Indigenous land. This undermines the trope that a gallery’s white walls produce a area in which artworks can be seen without having exterior reference factors.
The 100 strings divide the central wall into 1-metre squares resembling an environmental study approach. The branches and rocks probe and subvert the grid’s boundaries by rubbing, leaping and crumbling more than the demarcations – a reminder that nature are not able to often be contained by human aspirations.
Robert Andrew ‘Tracing inscriptions’
‘Embodied Knowledge: Queensland Present-day Art’ is in Queensland Artwork Gallery’s Gallery 4, Gallery 5 (Henry and Amanda Bartlett Gallery) and the Watermall from 13 August 2022 to 22 January 2023.
Acknowledgment of Region
The Queensland Artwork Gallery | Gallery of Modern-day Artwork acknowledges the Common House owners of the land on which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay back respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders previous and existing and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the huge imaginative contribution First Australians make to the artwork and society of this place.
It is customary in several Indigenous communities not to point out the identify or reproduce photographs of the deceased. All this kind of mentions and photos on the QAGOMA Site are with permission, nonetheless, treatment and discretion really should be exercised.
Reconciliation Action Plan
QAGOMA has released its inaugural Reconciliation Motion Approach (RAP) to information its contributions to reconciliation. Watch the 2022–24 RAP.
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