Parrots is a work by Brook Andrew, a Wiradjuri, Ngunnawal artist and curator, in the Parliament House Art Collections.

This photograph is from the artist’s 2006 series ‘Replicant’, where Andrew plays with the concept of nature and asks the audience if they can distinguish replicant from real.  

To create the series, Andrew borrowed taxidermied native animals from the Australian Museum, Sydney, photographed them in their natural position, and then digitally manipulated the image so that it was mirrored. The mirror image represents the act of looking and is asking the audience the question, 'is this animal dead or alive? A real animal or a model?’¹  

Brook Andrew
Brook Andrew (born 1970) is a Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal interdisciplinary artist and curator who lives and works in Melbourne. Andrew completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Sydney in 1993, a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales in 1999 and completed a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2021. Andrew has exhibited extensively in Australia since 1992 and has shown work internationally since the 48th Venice Biennale in1999.. In 2020 Andrew was the Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney. Andrew won the Work on Paper Award at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award in 2004, was awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2017, and has received several grants from organisations including the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria and the Australian Research Council. Andrew’s work is held in several collections nationally and internationally.²  

References  
1. Lynette Russell, “Replicant: Owl, Parrot, Possum, Flying Fox”, in Brook Andrew: Eye to Eye, Monash University Museum of Art, 2007, pp.68-69,  
2. Galerie Nathalie Obadia, “Brook Andrew”, accessed August 26, 2025. https://www.nathalieobadia.com/artists/25-brook-andrew/biography/