Brook Andrew’s (b.1970, Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal/Australia) is an artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans installation, photography, sculpture, neon, archival intervention, and public art. His work centres Indigenous ways of knowing, cultural sovereignty, and the enduring impact of colonial systems, often activating museum collections and public spaces to reframe dominant historical narratives. Drawing on his Wiradjuri (Indigenous Australian) mark-making traditions, language, and cultural memory connects ancestral knowledge with contemporary global conditions.
Since the mid-1990s, Andrew has developed a pioneering approach to museum intervention, beginning with Dispersed Treasures (1996) at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter. He has since created major projects with significant international institutions including the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris (2020); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2015); Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (2016); Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (2017); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2017); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2023); and Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO, Chatou (2025). These works critically engage archives and collections, foregrounding Indigenous presence and agency within institutional frameworks.
In 2017, Andrew’s artistic career was recognised with a large-scale, immersive solo exhibition, Brook Andrew: The Right to Offend is Sacred, at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. In 2022, Andrew premiered his multi-channel video, live performances and installation GABAN (2022) in YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal, Gropius Bau, Berlin. GABAN was also presented as a live performance over the opening weekend of the Art Gallery of NSW’s new building in 2022.
His works have been presented in significant institutions across the world, recent inclusions include: The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, touring exhibition, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA; Denver Art Museum, USA, et al (2025-2028); I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies, Autograph, London, UK (2025); ARTIST ACTIVIST ARCHIVIST: BERNHARD LÜTHI INVITES, Foundation Opale, Lens, Switzerland (2024); Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2023); The National 4: Australian Art Now, Australia (2023); QUEER, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2022); care, repair and healing, Gropius Bau, Germany (2022); 경로를 재탐색합니다UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA, Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea (2022). His works can be found in the collections of: Art Jameel Collection, Dubai (UAE), Kadist Foundation, Paris and San Francisco (USA), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (South Korea), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (Australia), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia), the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), the National Portrait Gallery (Australia), National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery (Australia), Art Gallery of South Australia, amongst others.
Andrew was the artistic director of the First Nations and artist-led NIRIN: the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020). Following this work, he was an international advisor for the Sámi Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), and a co-curator of YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal at the Gropius Bau (2022) along with Kader Attia, Giscard Bouchotte, Natasha Ginwala, Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, under the curatorial lead of Stephanie Rosenthal in collaboration with SERAFINE1369. Other ground-breaking artist-led curatorial projects include TABOO (2012-2013), an exhibition and program of talks, performances and films screenings at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia that brought together Australian and international speakers to respond to ideas around race, ethnicity, politics and religion.
Recently, Andrew established the publishing arm Garru Editions in 2020. Publications include galang 01 and galang 02 (2022), volumes by the Powerhouse-galang, an Indigenous-led think tank, collective and sovereign space initiated by Andrew in his role as Artistic Associate of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. As a leading thinker, practitioner and researcher in his field, Andrew is Enterprise Professor in Interdisciplinary Practice and Director of Reimagining Museums and Collections at the University of Melbourne and Adjunct in the Wominjeka Djeembana research lab, Monash University. He holds a DPhil from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
Through his artistic lens, Andrew is Adjunct Curator ngurambang-ayinya (First Nations), Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (2023-ongoing). In his role as Director of Reimagining Museums and Collections at the University of Melbourne (2022–ongoing), he founded BLAK C.O.R.E, a collective driven by First Nations methodologies, research and cultural practices focusing on walumarra (protection), yindyamarra gunhanha (ongoing respect) and murungidyal (healing in the museum). With Professor Brian Martin, Andrew also led the Australian Research Council project More than a guulany (tree): Aboriginal Knowledge Systems (2021–23), hosted by Monash University. In 2019, Andrew concluded a 4-year Australian Research Council grant, Representation, Remembrance and the Memorial at Monash University, Melbourne, responding to repeated calls for a national memorial to Aboriginal loss and the Frontier Wars. In 2016, Andrew was awarded the prestigious les Résidences Photographiques of le Musée du Quai Branly. In 2017, he undertook the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
Andrew lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia and Medellin, Colombia.