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Brook Andrew Appointed as Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney

Congratulations to Brook Andrew, who has been announced as the Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, taking place in 2020.

An artist of the Wiradjuri Nation with Celtic ancestry, Andrew is the first Indigenous Australian artist appointed to the role. For Andrew, his appointment as Artistic Director is an opportunity to ‘shine a light on the active, stable and rich pre-existing collaborations and connectivity of Indigenous and Edge cultures.’ He continues, ‘I aim to work together with artists, collectives and communities, from Australia and around the globe, to reconfigure the world as we see it and reveal rich local and global rhizomes and unique individual cultural expressions in one place.’

Across his interdisciplinary practice, Andrew interrogates Western colonial narratives, engaging with archival materials to assemble different understandings of historical legacies and offer new ways of inheriting and being in the world today. This year’s Sydney Biennale ‘Superposition’ featured his collaborative work What’s Left Behind, 2018, an installation of five sculptural vitrines exploring the complex relationship between objects and the meanings that are attributed to them.

As the Biennale of Sydney plays a key role in Australia’s engagement with both itself and the world, Andrew is a fitting choice. Kate Mills, Chairman of the Biennale of Sydney, noted that ‘the Biennale of Sydney offers an exciting geographical perspective for debate, controversy and cutting-edge discussions. As we collectively face an increasingly complex future, we are proud to celebrate the substantive, transformative creative practice of Brook Andrew as he imagines alternative visions for the future.’

Andrew was selected for the role of Artistic Director by a search committee which included Dr Sook-Kyung Lee, Senior Research Curator at Tate Research Centre: Asia, London; Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director, M+, West Kowloon, Hong Kong; and Aaron Seeto, Director MACAN Museum, Jakarta. The Biennale of Sydney also consulted closely with Exhibition Partners Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Carriageworks and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

The 22nd Biennale of Sydney will take place in multiple location across Sydney in 2020.

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