The Melbourne artist flipping the script on Hollywood’s ‘white saviours’
“Acting is this thing that I know I can never do,” says Andy Butler. It seems like a strange thing for the artist to say, considering that he can be seen on video screens all around us, sifting through archives and acting as a caricature of how Western filmmakers portrayed non-white characters.
This is the Melbourne artist’s latest work, Living Truthfully in Invented Circumstances, which is currently on display at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA) as part of their Future Remains exhibition.
Artist Andy Butler created his latest work as a response to the Henry Otley Beyer Collection held by the National Library of Australia.Credit: Joe Armao
The three-channel work takes up an entire, darkened room and was created as a response to the Henry Otley Beyer Collection held by the National Library of Australia. Otley Beyer was an American regarded as the “pioneer of anthropology in the Philippines”, according to the library, setting up the Department of Anthropology within the University of the Philippines in 1914.
Butler spent five weeks immersed in the collection. “I started looking at this archive for research in 2022. I had been looking for a Filipino archive that was accessible from Melbourne to … get a sense of the history of colonisation of the Philippines,” he explains. “I had been thinking a lot about the archetype of the white saviour and [the poem] ‘The White Man’s Burden’.”
The research was a gruelling process. As Butler made his way through photos of Filipino people in indigenous garb, and research reports that methodically laid out how the Philippines was colonised, he discovered pamphlets referencing films set in South-east Asia as well as Hollywood movies made before the Hays Code industry guidelines were imposed.
“Within the archive, the only thing I could look at without going crazy was these boxes full of cinema programs of films that were screened in theatres that had been built in Manila to screen Hollywood films for American audiences, and for upper-class Filipinos,” says Butler.
From left: Nicholas Smith, Alexandra Peter and Andy Butler are featured artists at Future Remains.Credit: Joe Armao
His response was to make a video work of his own, shot around Canberra as well as within the National Library itself.
Putting a spotlight on the impact of colonisation, Butler’s work recreates scenes from films made during the1930s that featured reductive depictions of Asian people and cultures. Though the dialogue from the scenes was spoken verbatim, he worked closely with the cast, dramaturge, cinematographer and crew to change the blocking and shots to cater to the Canberra context and set locations.
Asian-Australian actors Margot Morales, Richard Wu, Ari Angkasa and himself are cast as leads, restaging scenes from films including King of the Jungle, East of Borneo, The Son-Daughter, Thirteen Women and Mandalay. In one scene, Morales utters this line from East of Borneo: “White women are bad enough in their own environment, but when you get them into the jungle, well …”
The work is disarming, posing as light-hearted satire and farce with deliberately over-the-top dramatic acting.
An excerpt from ‘Living Truthfully in Invented Circumstances’.Credit: Andy Butler
“The vibe of the video is that it’s kind of eerie and absurd to make it feel really constructed, but it’s just us laughing at how ridiculous this all is and that’s how we’re playing these scenes,” says Butler.
But beneath the surface lurks the truth of how Western researchers and filmmakers are responsible for the ongoing colonisation of cultures.
“It’s so heavy to look at old histories that these institutions claim that they are past and beyond but are embedded within this archive. They have a sense of a racial hierarchy and an evolutionary racial ladder that underpins everything that they do,” says Butler.
“While looking through the archive, it raised these questions that started this idea of ‘what is the emotional inner life of the white saviour?’ and ‘how does that archetype continue today?’ ... Me making this work is like this continual process of trying to make sense of it.”
Shelley McSpedden is the curator of Future Remains. Credit: Joe Armao
Butler’s work is one of seven featured in Future Remains, which is the fourth exhibition in a biennial series supported by The Macfarlane Fund.
The commissions have been influential in providing a platform for emerging and mid-career artists. From the 2022 exhibition Like a Wheel That Turns, Nadia Hernandez, JD Reforma and Gian Manik were shortlisted for the 2023 Ramsay Art Prize and commissions by Betty Muffler as well as Hernandez were acquired by the NGV.
“[With] emerging artists, working with them on some of the biggest projects they’ve ever done is really exciting,” says curator Shelley McSpedden. “[With] established artists … it’s giving them the opportunity to push their work in a different way that they haven’t been able to do previously.”
The exhibition has two distinct parts. The first room contains large-scale sculptures by Teelah George, Salote Tawale, Kim Ah Sam and Nicholas Smith. They employ everyday materials including foam, twine, cardboard and tarpaulin. While Tawale, Smith and Ah Sam’s works denote personal stories, George’s work, which also incorporates bronze, explores ideas of what constitutes material value, and the time it takes for things to be made and wear away.
Artist Nicholas Smith pictured with the work ‘a gentle hesitation between’.Credit: Joe Armao
In the second half, including Butler’s work, the tone becomes darker. McSpedden says Butler’s work centres on how America has influenced Australia’s geopolitical relations.
“He’s drawing that analogy between archives as systems of knowledge and architecture as systems of spatial power and juxtaposing that with acting and filmmaking,” says McSpedden.
Wiradjuri artist Joel Sherwood Spring’s video installation is in the room following Butler’s, unpacking wellness and tech via an infomercial selling an Indigenous-based lifestyle. The exhibition ends on Alexandra Peters’ prints and pipeline-style sculptures that question mass industry and individuality.
In the second half of Future Remains, “those works are much more overtly critical … addressing some of the complicated aspects of the legacies and histories we’ve inherited,” says McSpedden.
“The show is a good survey of some of the key practices happening within the arts community of Australia,” she adds. “We are living in turbulent times and these artists are reckoning with a lot of different currents of turbulence.”
Future Remains is on at ACCA until September 1.
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