Artist: Brook Andrew

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

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.

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, in relation to context, care and time.

Throughout the exhibition, Andrew develops a symbolic language of 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.

Andrew incorporates feathers from the Australian magpie, his Wiradjuri totem, as well as those of the wedge-tailed 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.