Presence is a solo show by Brisbane-based First Nations artist Robert Andrew. Andrew expands on his kinetic installation practice to create a new physical landscape that combines programmable technological machinery with string, earth pigments, ochres, rocks, and soil. This work will change throughout the exhibition’s duration, creating a residue and revealing an internal core that references Aboriginal histories, stories, and connections. A deep sense of time and continuity is expressed in the work’s movement, invoking cycles enacted to and within the land.

The exhibition at IMA Belltower is accompanied by a new projection work developed in collaboration with Sai Karlen for the façade of the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts.

Robert Andrew is a descendant of the Yawuru people of the Broome area in the Kimberley, Western Australia, and holds European and Filipino heritage. With this connection to different lineages, his artistic practice explores identity and history, often by combining natural materials and contemporary technologies. His works erode and expose substrates, build stories and create material traces. Andrew completed a Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art in 2012 at the Queensland College of Art (QCA), accepting his Fine Art Honours in 2013. He is currently completing his doctorate in Visual Arts at QCA, Griffith University. Andrew has exhibited widely throughout Australia including: The National, Art Gallery of NSW (2019); Experimenta Make Sense, Latrobe Regional Gallery (2019); and Myall Creek and beyond, New England Regional Art Museum (2018). Recent solo exhibitions include: Data Stratification, Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2018); an unforgetting, Pop Gallery (QCA Galleries) Brisbane, Queensland; and Our Mutable Histories, Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane City Hall (2017).