The first thing we saw when we walked into Brook Andrew’s show Photography and Neon at Stills Gallery was a work mounted at the top of the stairs. At the bottom was the White House and sailing way above it a satellite, both constructed with white neon tubing. In the middle of the gallery was another neon work called DNA, a large construction in multiple colours hanging in the middle of the space.
We were confused. The invitation to the show featured a photo of a kookaburra, possibly two kookaburras, mirror images, on a branch. The kookaburra is the largest and most wide spread of the kingfisher family of birds in Australia, and we were hoping – we don’t know why – for an exhibition that was an ornithological study of popular Australian wildlife. A Pied Currawong was featured in another mirror image work, where the bird was sitting on branch eyeing off a black snake. But there were also photographs of nude Aboriginal people against dark brewing skies and an emu puking up the letters USA. Upstairs was a series of photos taken in India of signs hanging in trees and by the side of the road that said things like SELECT YOUR INVADER and OPINION AS A CRIME. Obviously, this had nothing to do with wildlife, it was political.
The two bodies of work are quite separate, if not in intention, then definitely in effect. The upstairs work, collectively titled Indian Series, is openly and obviously ‘political’ in the broadest sense. They have the appearance of political art (text being a dead giveaway that there is a social engagement going on in an art work) and are visually unencumbered by a sense of an ‘artistic’ styling or framing. If these photographs were in black and white you would have a hard time placing them chronologically as they could have been made at any time since the 1950s. Because of these features, the works immediately negate themselves, becoming emblems of the artist’s good intentions rather than any specific or meaningful engagement with the text, their placement or the audience.
The works in the main gallery, called Kallar Midday, however, are far more effective. The combination of the neon works, the wildlife pictures and the images of naked men and women evoke a museum setting and the artful arrangement of the pieces creates a commentary between the apparently ambiguous images and the blatant, in-your-faceness of the neon works. A trio of photographs called Gary, Tina and Miriam edge close to kitsch, evoking sentimentalized versions of indigenous people equally reminiscent of black velvet paintings and the well-intentioned displays of museum culture. The two kookaburras – looking away from one another – and the pied currawongs – staring at the black snake – are heavy with alternate readings, suddenly symbolic of anentirely different order of classification and ‘scientific understanding’ than the ones for which they were created.
Andrew’s show is strangely configured. The unsettling and ambiguous nature of many of the works are let down by the hectoring obviousness of the text pieces, yet, together, they form a persuasive and troubling voice.
