Travelling Colony

Overview

Brook Andrew is a master of the interdisciplinary arts practice. He has tackled a huge range of media and produced thought-provoking, innovative work that has been shown all over the world. Travelling Colony is made up of a number of hand-painted caravans standing together like a grazing herd in the large foyer of Carriageworks.

The doors of each caravan are left wide open, inviting the viewer in. You can't help hesitating before you enter, expecting to interrupt a scene or trespass onto someone's space but each caravan is left stark, with almost no personal adornment, like a home left abandoned. In each, there is a small television set playing interviews of Aboriginal members of the Redfern community, those that have been here for their whole lives, have passed through at different times, or are newcomers. They talk about what Redfern means to them, the community and its place in history as the “Black Capital of Australia.” The works serve as a commemoration of achievements of the community, people who have made significant contributions to the Aboriginal theatre and arts scene. It’s a living history, archives that record the future and progression of the community as well as the past.

Repetition is a strong theme in this exhibition; in the numerous caravans clustered together, in the linear, zigzagging pattern (based on traditional Wiradjuri patterns) that travels across the caravans as a kind of extended canvas, housing the stories of the community which are played on a loop. The vehicles imply that the stories will keep travelling, repeating themselves, living on in the memory of the people and of the audience strengthened by their visual potency. Andrew creates a playful way of inviting audiences to see a community through the eyes of its members and to question the nature of how history shapes the present.

Travelling Colony forms the centrepiece of Black Capital, an art initiative at Carriageworks that considers Redfern’s place as Australia’s urban Indigenous capital, a part of Sydney Festival.

Image: Susannah Wimberley