ANDREW GILBERT, GB

Andrew Gilbert (1980, Edinburgh) in his drawings and installations combines his studies of Primitivism in Modern Art, military history and a rich personal language of symbols and characters (such as “Andrew Emperor of Africa” or “Holy Brocoli”). He examines the representations of exotic cliches, and propaganda techniques used to demonize the eternal foreign Other. His work refers to the Western “Colonial Exhibitions”, military museums dioramas and ethnographic museums presentations, and draws parallels between the 19th Century Imperial conquests and present day Military Occupations. In doing so he questions who is really “primitive” and critiques the Western Historical narrative and contemporary nostalgia for Empire that led to, for example, Brexit and the rise of nationalism across Europe today. All of this is combined with absurdist humour and often grotesque violence. Andrew Gilbert, who currently lives and works in Berlin, has visited four times in recent years South Africa to study the battlefields of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, the Boer War and the military campaigns of Shaka Zulu. The artist exhibited his works in several international (Europe, South Africa, Japan) private and public venues, as the London Tate Modern.