DIWIL

Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) was proud to present DIWIL, an immersive installation by the internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and scholar, Brook Garru Andrew.

The Wiradjuri word diwil translates to 'collection' and this reflected on the artist’s relationship with objects, history, and Country. The exhibition marked the premiere of GARRU NGAJUU NGAAY, a major new installation commissioned by MAMA. GARRU NGAJUU NGAAY was a wall drawing and neon installation that fully surrounded audiences in the museum’s collection galleries. The work was part of a continually evolving approach to wall drawing and museum intervention, and prominently included language, with the words NGAJUU NGAAY – I SEE making the gallery a place of inspection, reckoning and exchange.

Within the space created by GARRU NGAJUU NGAAY, key works from the last decade amplified the artist’s approach to harnessing alternative narratives to explore the legacies of colonisation and modernism.

Brook Garru Andrew’s matriarchal kinship is from the kalar midday (land of the three rivers) of Wiradjuri, and Ngunnawal on his mother’s father’s line, both Aboriginal nations of Australia, and paternally Celtic. He was driven by the collisions of intertwined narratives, often emerging from the mess of the “Colonial Hole”.

He was Artistic Director of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, 2020, and is currently the Enterprise Professor, Interdisciplinary Practice at the University of Melbourne, Associate Professor, Fine Art at Monash University and Associate Researcher at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Brook is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels.