bLAK bABE(z) & kWEER kAT(z)
The new works by two of Boomalli's senior member artists - Brook Andrew and Rea - shown in the heart of Sydney's pink zone at Gitte Weise Gallery on Oxford Street, were given greater resonance by their inclusion in the 1998 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival. Since its inception twenty years ago Mardi Gras has been all about visibility. Initially conceived as a radical political action, Mardi Gras has evolved to become Australia's most popular annual cultural event. Nowadays, Mardi Gras is an ecstatically colourful expression of gay pride which reinforces the gay and lesbian community's sense of collective identity and promotes awareness of issues closely related to that constituency. Similarly, in bLAK bABE(z) & kWEER kAT(z) Brook Andrew and Rea, who identify themselves as 'blak' and 'kweer', use new media to strategically counter the personal sense of invisibility engendered by their own embodiment of multiple differences-Aboriginality as well as homosexuality.
Many of Brook Andrew's previous installations have chronicled the relationship between whiteman's kitsch representations of Aboriginality and the lived history of Aboriginal people. Widely recognised for delivering potent critiques of colonialist systems of thought, Andrew's parallel concern has been to reclaim appropriated Aboriginal imagery. Forming part of that secondary project is dazzle my soul/image is everything/Just is sw(e)eat, an animated sculpture consisting of five shocking pink neon boomerangs hovering above the Oxford Street strip on the gallery facade. It could prove to be an instant classic. Whereas Andrew has formerly used familiar Aboriginal motifs as a kind of rhetorical visual language, dazzle ... shows him forsaking subtlety in order to fully exploit the seductive power of the icon. Indeed, launching such an engaging and legible symbol into