Giving the Biennale of Sydney an Edge: Interview with Brook Andrew

When it opens to the public at six venues on March 14, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (BoS) will be the first edition in its 47-year history with an artist as its artistic director, and it will mark the first time that an Indigenous Australian has helmed the Biennale. Multi-disciplinary Wiradjuri artist Brook Andrew, whose practice spans visual and historical research into the iniquities of colonial and indigenous histories of Australia, has selected 98 artists from 47 countries to show in BoS22, many of whom identify as Indigenous or LGBTQ, and whose diverse variety of cultural and activist practices offer alternative narratives to the racist and gender stereotyping that swirls around these cultures. Titled “Nirin”—the name is a Wiradjuri word meaning “edge”—BoS22 is a radical departure from previous Biennales, challenging the system of the European-American art canon that has traditionally dominated the BoS’s past editions, at least up until the 21st Biennale of Sydney in 2018, which was directed by Mami Kataoka, the first time that a person from Asia was selected as artistic director of BoS. In mid-February, contributing editor Michael Young sat down with Andrew in Sydney to discuss his plans for BoS22 and what drives his artistic interests. 

Firstly, I know that you have continued your art practice over the months since you were appointed artistic director of BoS. So how do you see your role in the context of assembling the Biennale—more as an artist or as a curator?  

I am an artist. I am not a curator. And I make that very clear. Let’s not get bogged down in terminology but in some ways it is important to clarify it. A curator to me is someone who is an art historian who specifically has a discipline around pictorial practice. As an artist I look through a different lens than a curator, and have a different way of doing things.

You decided to overhaul the historic Old Court Galleries at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), where many old European masterpieces currently hang. Can you tell me something about this?

The historic Old Court Galleries, dating from 1897, mimic those of Western cultural institutions around the world in both architecture and presentation. It was extremely important for me to reconfigure these spaces and was a prerequisite for me in using the AGNSW as a venue. During BoS they will resonate with a commitment to readdress established and Western-centric art histories, and engage with First Nations narratives.

Why did you choose the title “Nirin?” And what does it mean or evoke?  

It is a Wiradjuri word and means “working on the edge,” although there isn’t really an English translation. It is more nuanced and complex than that. Working with other artists is like overlapping and how our overlapping edges make a new center. The Biennale itself is about bringing all these different groups into the fold. There are so many people involved and the most important thing for me is that they all come together in a constellation.

Did you plan to focus this edition of BoS on artists operating on the periphery, or outside, of the mainstream? Or artists who have been previously excluded from the contemporary canon?

I wouldn’t word it like that. I’m working with artists who have always been outside and who are here being allowed space to work. It’s a kind of enabling. We don’t feel like we are victims. We feel incredibly empowered and that is where that energy comes from. This is the first time that many of these artists have come together in an exhibition like this, even though many of them spend a lot of time travelling through the northern hemisphere to exhibit. I’m really excited about this.

Since the Biennale started in 1973, there has always been a strong emphasis on painting. By far the majority of artists you have selected for BoS 2020 are not painters, so can I ask, how do you think about that practice today? 

There in fact is a lot of painting in the Biennale, from Haiti, New Zealand, and the Philippines, as well as Australia, for example. There are several at AGNSW and two on Cockatoo Island. The Tennant Creek Brio group are also painters (nine in all, who will be showing on the Island and at Artspace). There will also be painting in several of the installation works. It is a slippery thing, painting. What is painting?

Do you think of your edition of BoS as political?

I hope it is—it would be real to present the world as political. But I don’t see myself as a political artist. I see myself like any other artist who just happens to hold a mirror up to the world. I’m not living in the past; I’m understanding the present. My iteration of the Biennale is about ideas and ideology. Even though I look at Indigenous and “edge” cultures, what interests me could also be anything from the environment to alternative narratives. As an exhibition, the Biennale will be about the ideology that binds it all together. It is about those juxtapositions, not only in terms of artists, but also cultural objects and museum collections, and how we can put these objects together to create ideas and opportunities and to think about the world differently.

Will there be a spectacular aspect to the installations?

Yes. I love a wow factor in an exhibition. If someone is going to drag themselves to the BoS I want them to experience something incredible. Why not? But it is about what kind of wow. I think that feeling comes from how artists are supported to work in environments so that their work really sings. It can be a beautiful moving piece and it can be a beautiful photo or painting on the wall but it is about how the audience comes across this work or what the artist can communicate. That is what this Biennale is about—balancing these things. I have always believed that if my family or my grandmother can’t understand the art, there is a problem.

What are your personal core artistic values and will these values drive the Biennale?

Communication, process, authenticity, integrity. Also playfulness, in the way we need to challenge dominant narratives and how we juxtapose different thoughts and ideas. I’m interested in memory. I’m interested in memorialization. I’m interested in how we see the world and what is it that is shifting in the world today. These are things that drive my art and will drive the Biennale. But I’m just the catalyst. All the artists are representing what they see and feel and do in the world today. I am curious. It is how I practice. I’m drawn to people who have similar ideas. I would never say to an artist, make an artwork like this or like that. I don’t understand that language. When people have asked me to do that I am just not interested.

Have your views about what you hoped to achieve changed over the months since you were first appointed artistic director?  

If anything they have grown to allow for greater possibilities. Biennales need themes, and in “Nirin” we have healing, sovereignty, environment, and working together. I’m very happy with the outcomes and very happy with the processes.  

Will your BoS challenge the dominant western-centric art-world narrative?

I think it might.

Michael Young is a contributing editor of ArtAsiaPacific.

The 22nd Biennale of Sydney will be on view at various locations in Sydney from March 14 to March 24, 2020.

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