Ames Yavuz is pleased to present Symbolic Nature, an exhibition by Brook Andrew, marking his first presentation with the gallery in London.

Andrew is an internationally recognised artist whose work has been exhibited at major institutions including Tate Britain, London; the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. He has also participated in significant international exhibitions including the Sharjah Biennial and Liverpool Biennial, and was Artistic Director of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020).

Working across collage, sculpture, and assemblage, Andrew explores how images, objects, and cultural signs accumulate meaning over time, and how those meanings shift, dissolve, or are reactivated in the present. Drawing on romanticised historical representations of Aboriginal people from the artist’s Wiradjuri Nation and neighbouring Nations, the works re-present and disrupt these inherited images within layered visual environments that question their authority and permanence.

Materially and conceptually, the exhibition is grounded in lived relationships to country, lineage, and knowledge systems. Andrew incorporates feathers from the Australian magpie, his Wiradjuri totem, as well as those of the Wedge-tail Eagle and Rosella, alongside echidna quills, ochre, and other culturally significant materials. These elements carry familial, spiritual, and communal meaning, extending the works beyond image into embodied connection.

Central to the exhibition is the idea of holding ceremony within both the artwork and the exhibition space. Objects are embedded or enclosed within layered surfaces, sometimes visible, sometimes concealed, introducing an ethics of visibility in which meaning is revealed gradually and in relation to context, care, and time.

Throughout the exhibition, Andrew introduces a symbolic language, floating eyes, listening ears, and celestial forms, alongside references to spiritual iconography and surrealist imagery. These elements act as metaphors for perception and witnessing, while destabilising the historical image.

Bringing together a new body of work, Symbolic Nature presents Andrew’s practice in London with the gallery for the first time, situating a critically established artist within a new context.