Brook Andrew - Theme Park

This book is the illustrated hardback that accompanied the Brook Andrew show featuring essays by Marcia Langton, Nicholas Thomas and Anthony Gardner, an interview by Maria Hlavajova with Brook Andrew and three bookmarks in land rights colours.

Brook Andrew’s 'Theme Park' at the Aboriginal Art Museum of Utrecht (known as AAMU) was an installation throughout the entire building rather than merely an exhibition. It pulled together works from collections of ethnography in Holland, Belgium and France as well as old and contemporary art, Andrew’s own work and stuff from his collection of Aboriginal kitsch and Australiana. 

The exhibition combined new and recent work from The Island series, 2008, and video work Interviews, 2006, as well as creating site specific installation work incorporating Aboriginal objects from private and public museum collections including the Royal Museum of Central Africa (Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale), Brussels.

In his introduction AAMU curator Georges Petitjean points out that the Aboriginal people of Australia have a special historical place in the European imagination not held by any other indigenous people such as those of Africa or America – he explains this to be the case on the basis of distance and the lack of political engagement or shared history with them, thus they can remain noble savages ‘blending harmoniously with the alien but desired landscape of Australia, and possessing secrets … lost to Europeans in the darkness of time.’

The cover is cloth bound with black and silver (silver not shown). Text in English and Dutch for the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht, October 17 2008 – April 13 2009.

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