Eyeing the invisible

He's Australian by birth, and of Scottish and Australian Aboriginal descent - but he has created many of his major works in far-flung locales including Lithuania, England, India, China and New York.

These works themselves also defy easy categorisation, encompassing neon installations, sculpture, photography displays, video installations, experimental prints and text pieces.

"Brook Andrew: Eye To Eye", an exhibition running until Sunday at the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre (BACC), offers an engaging introduction to one of Australia's most exciting, and eclectic, contemporary artists.

"Eye To Eye" represents the first major survey of Andrew's 15-year career. The selection of works by curators at Monash University in Melbourne, which originally staged the show, reflects the driving themes present in Andrew's art.

First among these influences is Andrew's Aboriginal heritage. His mother hails from the Wiradjuri tribe of native Australians. For much of Australia's past, white settlers oppressed these and other supposedly "primitive" Aboriginals, relegating them to the fringes of society.

Andrew, on hand for the Bangkok premiere of "Eye To Eye", said that work like his could help restore Aboriginal people's place in Australia's cultural narrative.

"Art is history," he said.

Abstract Wiradjuri patterns feature prominently in many of the prints on display. And in a striking 2006 series Andrew appropriated the iconography of traditional Aboriginal totems by photographing taxidermied Australian wildlife.

His 1996 work "Sexy and Dangerous", considered a classic of modern Aboriginal Art, is a bold reinterpretation of an old anthropological portrait of an Aboriginal man. The image satirises the chauvinistic colonial perspective that led to such photographic cataloguing of Aboriginals while also celebrating the beauty and cultural potency of the picture's subject.

In 2007's "Gun-Metal Grey" series, Andrew depicts the historical marginalisation of Aboriginals by printing ethnographic pictures onto a foil and cotton backdrop.

"I wanted the images to disappear and reappear," he said of the unusual technique.

Andrew also wanted the pictures to speak to larger, global issues.

"These people [in the images] are anonymous, he said.  "It relates to other invisible people around the world. Like the disappeared of South America, or the killing fields of Cambodia."

As seen with the "Gunmetal" images, Andrew's work is often highly political.

"A lot of my work in inspired by power relationships - people who are in control, people who aren't in control," he said.

"Polemics", a 2000 text installation, grew out of an English newspaper's criticism of the "polemical" political bent of much modern art.  Andrew responded with a neon sign that spelled out a message in the Wiraduri language.

Translated, it reads: "Those who live passionately offer a social exchange. Polemics is the skin of now."

Given this focus on politics, it's perhaps fitting that Andrew's show in Bangkok is sponsored by the Australian Embassy.

Along with Andrew's engagement with universal political themes comes an embrace of many global influences.

He has travelled the world creating his conceptual art, and many of his works contain visual references to his overseas experiences.  One series, for example, incorporates motifs from Japanese advertising; another, conceived and completed in New Delhi, uses locally made shop signs to deliver messages about freedom.

"I think for me, [my artwork] is a kind of personal history. You know… 'This reflects my time in India.' Or, 'This reflects my interest in graffiti, my experiences," Andrew said.

A recent trip to Shanghai resulted in a neon installation that claims, in Mandarin text, "You always wanted to be black."

"It's just about concepts of blackness: What is it, is it a real thing, what does it mean?" he said.

Andrew hop-scotched the globe asking a collection of strangers these very questions for his video project "Interviews", also on display in "Eye to Eye".

Because of the global character of his work, and the itinerant lifestyle that produces it (he just spent six months in New York, he's now temporarily relocated back to Melbourne), Andrew resists being characterised as an Australian artist.

"I see myself as a global citizen," he said.

This outlook may help explain why his show has played equally well in Bangkok, Manila and Singapore as it has in Melbourne and Sydney.

"He has such a rich body of work that has many resonances with many cultures and peoples," said Kirrily Hammond, assistant curator of "Eye to Eye".

Andrew has another idea about why his work has proven so accessible around the world.

"I can kind of guess that it's the aesthetic — it's kind of pop-y and kind of [uses] the everyday, mundane kind of stuff," he said.

Like conceptual artists before him - Warhol, for example - Andrew subverts popular icons to create new messages. An ad image for Japanese tobacco brand "Black and White", for example, is juxtaposed in a 2005 work with Wiradjuri designs and a golden dollar sign.

"In a lot of my work there are hidden meanings and stereotypes, because I think that in society there are lots of stereotypes. Nothing is ever what it is."

"Eye to Eye" runs until Sunday at the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre. The Centre is open 10am to 9pm, Tuesday to Sunday. Entry is free.