The BOOreaucrats navigate a space of truth, remembrance and cognitive dissonance by playing clichéd roles as institutional officials. They investigate the investigators, examine the examiners and perform purposeful profundity through gestures that result in photographic outcomes, bureaucratic documents and administrative ephemera. Using graphic tools, historic archives and pointless paper shuffling, their official duties result in multidisciplinary outcomes.
The BOOreaucrats represent cultural introspection. Sometimes in ridiculous self-depreciation, sometimes earnest contemplation, these two middle-aged administrators appear to investigate all that relates to notions of cultural origin. An autonomous subsidiary of its collaborative parent project The Bureau for the Organisation of Origins (BOO), The BOOreaucrats (Benjamin Sheppard and Peter Burke) question concepts of absolute origins and the divisive narratives that support them.
The BOOreaucrats
A BOO subsidiary
Exhibitions
2022 Future Tense, Merri-bek (formerly Moreland) Summer Show, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2022 ArtBOX October commission - Interstate and Global
2022 Fundraiser, Conners Conners, Fitzroy, Melbourne
2022 Powerpoint, Bargoonga Nganjin / North Fitzroy Library, North Fitzroy, Melbourne
2021 History and Heritage, Merri-bek Summer Show, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2020 Change Division, Incinerator Art Award: Art for Social Change, The Incinerator, Moonee Ponds
2018 Administrative performances and posters as part of Political Poster Callout for The BOO, AAANZ Conference, Aesthetics,
Politics and Histories: The Social Context of Art, RMIT Creative Space, Melbourne
2018 Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Biennale for Australian Art, Ballarat
Collections
Private collections (USA, France, Australia)