Brook Andrew

18 Lives in Paradise

Artwork Detail

"The basic unit used in 18 Lives in Paradise is a cardboard printed box 50 x 50 x 50 cm. The boxes are the building blocks for a sculpture, wall or any other structure.

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."

Brook Andrew 2011

Title
18 Lives in Paradise
Artist/creator
Brook Andrew
Production date
2011
Medium
colour lithography on cardboard
Dimensions
500 x 500 x 500 mm
Credit line
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2011
Accession no
C2011/1/33.1-5
Copyright
Copying restrictions apply
Department
International Art
Display status
Not on display

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