Robert Andrew
Within an utterance

Brisbane-based artist Robert Andrew works on uncovering the language, culture and history buried beneath our feet. He builds machines that excavate language and ancient knowledge systems recorded in the earth—his process, he says, is a bit like an archaeological dig. After Robert, at thirteen, discovered he was Aboriginal, a descendent of the Yawuru people from the Broome area in the Kimberley, much of what he learnt about this part of himself came first from historical documents, mostly settler accounts. The colonial script, in short, but also, for Robert, a bridge spanning time: a pathway towards ancestry and knowledge.

At Mona, Robert continued his work excavating biography—his own, and others’—and unearthing lost family histories, in collaboration with Pakana curator Zoe Rimmer, Aboriginal linguistic consultant Theresa Sainty, and cultural burning practitioner and Wakka Wakka man Luke Mabb. Three new works filled the museum, which delved into the buried history of lutruwita (Tasmania) and responded to conversations Robert had with local speakers of palawa kani: the revived language of Tasmanian Aboriginal people; and a complex ongoing project drawing upon community memory, extant voice recordings and European written records of the island’s original languages, of which no living speakers remain. A mechanical plotting system translated language into movement then ochre, charcoal and elemental patterning on the wall. Dripping water eroded a compacted column of ochre and soil, revealing layer upon layer—like a landscape in continuous motion. And a video work took mark-making and palawa kani even further towards pure abstraction … Suggesting what exactly? Neither ancient relic nor extinct tongue, but a knowledge system in perpetual renewal, here and now.

Exhibition text by Luke Hortle