Andrea Fisher was born in Brisbane in 1981 and is from the Birri Gubba language group from central Queensland. Her paternal family, the Fishers, were moved to Cherbourg in southern Queensland in the early 1900s when the settlement was known as Barambah. In 2001, Fisher graduated from the Queensland College of Art (QCA) with a degree in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art. Her professional development since then has been aided in part by her involvement with proppaNOW, an artists collective that includes Tony Albert , her contemporary at QCA, and other more senior artists such as Richard Bell , Gordon Hookey and Jennifer Herd . Fisher has created work in mixed media and more consistently, wearable jewellery – for example, brooches based on traditional shield designs from Wakka Wakka country. More recently she has produced a series of works consisting of copper wire woven into traditional bags. One of these works was preselected for the 2007 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award and exhibited at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT). Also in 2007, Fisher began work on a confronting series of wearable cast iron shackles, such as were used to restrain Aboriginal people on the Queensland frontier. Although specialising in jewellery, Fisher is primarily a visual 3D artist who describes her practice as one which applies “a sense of Aboriginal history to the materials and aesthetic of jewellery making, object and installation”. Fisher has exhibited work at the Queensland Art Gallery, Craft Queensland and Fireworks Gallery.

Writers:

Browning, Daniel

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011