Brook Andrew and r e a: bLAK bABE(z) and kWEER kAT(z)

Wiradjuri/Ngunnawal, and Celtic artist Brook Andrew (b.1970) has made significant contributions to the art ecology with work spanning installation, photography and museum interventions. Andrew's practice takes interest in histories of colonisation, First Nations resistance, and the power structures of museums. His interdisciplinary practice challenges the limitations imposed by power structures, historical amnesia, stereotypes, and complicity. Léuli Eshrāghi has described the queer aspects of Andrew's work as inviting "the viewer to contemplate how architecture, social relations and cultural memory might look if Indigenous lineages to Ancestors, beyond the pale of assumed heterosexuality and docility to colonisation, were recognised." Andrew has exhibited internationally since 1996, with recent exhibitions being presented at Musee du Quai Branly, Paris (2020); Wuzhen International Art Exhibition (2019); Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), Milan (2019); Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, Geneva (2017-2018); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2017); and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2014-15). Andrew was the artistic director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney entitled *NIRIN* held across various Sydney venues in 2020. Andrews is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.

r e a (b. 1962) is from the Gamilaraay/Wailwan and Biripi peoples of NSW and is an experimental interdisciplinary artist / curator / activist / researcher / cultural educator and creative thinker. Their creative practice-led research extends over three decades, their art often focuses on unveiling the silence of the colonial archive. Their creative research extends into the reclamation and reframing of the bla(c)k queer body, as they re-story Indigeneity and bla(c)kness! Their extensive research includes the examination of contemporary discourses, which as yet have not changed the colonial narrative of Aboriginality. r e a’s work is centred in the visual arts and located in experimental digital technologies that intentionally, disrupt and disturb a history of silence. Their art consciously draws on a legacy of lived experiences, ancestral knowledge and the impact of intergenerational trauma, grief and loss. ‘My art is the practice of reclamation; a disruption of the colonial gaze through re-storying the blak-body as a point of protest.’