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-deprecation, 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
The BOOreaucrats 2025 Photo: Darren James
Fieldwork: Investigating Mungo (Settling in…) 2024
Signs of Agreement - triptych 2024
The Origin... 2025 Photo: Darren James
Fieldwork (Investigating Tyrrell) 2023
Fieldwork: Investigating Mungo (Settling in) 2023
Powerpoint at Bargoonga Nganjin / North Fitzroy Library, Melbourne 2022 Photo: J Forsyth
Just Managing, 2022
AAANZ Conference 2018
Performing Profundity 2018
Fieldwork (Lining up Ballarat) 2018
Performing Profundity detail 2018
Fieldwork (Measuring the Girth) 2017
Propositioin to Reverse the Redaction of an Unbuilt Monument 2017
In the beginning....
Exhibitions
2025 Signs of Agreement, venue location under embargo (QLD) upcoming August…
2024 Belonging Merri-bek Summer Show, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2023 A Climate for Change Merri-bek Summer Show, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2023 Das Kapital at NOTFAIR Art fair supported by MARS Gallery
2023 The Origin of Images, The Pavilion, Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne
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)