Lot 46

Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 2011
Private collection, Melbourne

Brook Andrew: Paradise. Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. 18 June - 30 July 2011
Brook Andrew: 18 Lives in Paradise, The Installation), ArtSpace, Sydney, 20 July - 21 August 2011 (another example)
Brook Andrew - Hope, Peace, and Paradise, Geelong Gallery, Victoria, 16 July - 23 October 2022 (another example)

"The box is also a parody of the courier box - those containers daily transported around the globe in the vast movement of lives and identities today. What was thought of as fixed may not be so.
The images are sourced from postcards. The postcards range from the early to mid-twentieth century and form part of a worldwide curiosity in indigenous people, circus acts and personalities, environment, and resources ... The images come together as an assemblage of ‘freaks' and represent the collision paths of indigenous and non-indigenous cultures; those being documented out of curiosity and those belonging to dominant cultures who have used the land and its people for entertainment and wealth.
18 Lives in Paradise can form a column or wall. It can be a barrier, a beacon or epitaph. En masse, the boxes are a symbol of many lives whose identities are sometimes twisted for the gaze of the curious world." (Artist's statement)

© Brook Andrew/Copyright Agency, 2025