Brook Andrew’s ‘SMASH IT’ (2018) is a digital amalgamation of images, videos, sound and text. Archival film from the Smithsonian Institute collides with found footage and media samples from the artist’s collection. Andrew co-opts and reframes ethnographic photographs, newspaper extracts, film footage and other cultural objects to dismantle racist stereotypes of First Nations people. The work complicates colonial archives and their embedded ideologies by repurposing archival materials to subvert dominant narratives. Throughout, interviews with prominent Australian Indigenous intellectuals, including Marcia Langton, Wesley Enoch and Maxine Briggs, are juxtaposed against imagery of demolished and defaced Western statuary and monuments to colonial power. In its cacophony of voices and materials, ‘SMASH IT’ brings colonial archives into conversation with the present moment, inviting us to consider their contemporary legacies and international relevance.

Gala Porras-Kim’s ‘Roll Call’ (2023) is an audio piece, resurrecting the names of those who have passed and been reincarnated into objects now stored in museum collections. According to their beliefs, the deceased left conservation instructions for their names to be spoken aloud as their bodies were preserved for reincarnation. Porras-Kim honours their wishes and presents a whispered reading of their names, bestowing agency on the dead and questioning museum conservation models. This work builds on Porras-Kim’s interest in the institutional and linguistic frameworks that define, legitimise and preserve cultural heritage. It invites us to question the ethical principles of museological conservation and to imagine new meanings for artefacts displayed inside museums or assembled in its storages.