18 Lives in Paradise

18 Lives in Paradise

  • Artist

    Brook Andrew

  • Production Date

    2011

  • Medium

    colour lithography on cardboard

  • Size

    500 x 500 x 500 mm

  • Credit

    Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2011

  • Accession Number

    C2011/1/33.1-5

  • Accession Date

    27 Sep 2011

  • Department

    International Art

  • Classification

    Installation

  • Collection

    Chartwell

  • Subjects

    photographic postcards, boxes (containers)

  • Description

    "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