That is not my intention, I have my own experiences of being crowned in Australia, as an Urban Aboriginal artist underscored as that title is by racism and primitivism and I do not wear it well. The Classical style and pose of the figure in the panel Empire, and the draped animal skins and weapons, reflect a stereotype of the noble savage that was widely influential in how people viewed Indigenous people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bellas Gallery. Conversation Bill Wright talks to Gordon Bennett, in Kelly Gellatly with contributions by Bill Wright, Justin Clemens and Jane Devery, Ian McLean, Who is John Citizen? Greenaway Art Gallery, 2006, Kelly Gellatly Citizen in the making, in Kelly Gellatly, p. 24. Once again the letters A B C D feature as a potent symbol and complete the grid. New perspectives on familiar images and stories are presented. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 182 x 182 cm. Many Indigenous Australians saw this appropriation as further evidence of a justification of colonisation and a Eurocentric interpretation of Aboriginal culture. She was once thought to be the last surviving Tasmanian Aborigine. * *Collection: Museum of Sydney on the site of the first Government House, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales. These contrasting and complex meanings and ideas are not accidental. What aspects of Bennetts works might viewers focus on as emotional? These images are fused and overlapped in a dynamic composition underpinned by Mondrian-style grids. This culminated in the Notes to Basquiat series in 2003. In 1989, a year after graduating from art college, his work was included in the high profile Australian Perspect a exhibition of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Bennetts art engages with historical and contemporary questions of cultural and personal identity, with a specific focus on Australias colonial past and its postcolonial present. In Malevichs work the black square is seen as having a strong and even spiritual presence. It is also a direct reference to biblical stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. In her lifetime, Trugannini witnessed the systematic and often violent destruction of her culture and people. The Notes to Basquiat: 911 series and the Camouflage series, which reflect on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the war in Iraq respectively, highlight Bennetts global perspective. Gordon Bennett is an Australian artist of Aboriginal descent. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, this was a time to mourn the devastating consequences of 200 years of colonisation. Gordon Bennett 1. The early 'Possession Island' (Abstraction))' 1991 was one choice. Every object is carefully and clearly painted, yet the images conceptually blur together as they intersect and interlace through the grid, across the canvas. Discuss with reference to the same works. The Politics of Art. He drew on and sampled from many artists and traditions to create a new language and a new way of reading these images. John Citizen is an artist for our times: he reflects back to us citizens the white Australia of the postKeating era. Bennett intentionally fuses this iconic style of Western painting with the famous Aboriginal white dot painting of the Western Desert, reproducing the mix in Possession Island. On closer inspection we see it is an image of an Aboriginal man. Gordon Bennett, born on 16 April 1887 at Balwyn, Melbourne, was Australia's most controversial Second World War commander. It is open to self revelation, self redemption and a myriad of rich images of self that can be built upon. In this way, Bennett effectively exposes and questions the constructed and value-laden nature of language and history, and how they shape our understanding of the world. In the past Quadroon, was a socially acceptable term used to label Indigenous people as a way of establishing genetic heredity. ), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2007, p. 97, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, pp. By the late 1980s there was also a growing awareness within Australian society of the injustices suffered by the Indigenous population as a result of their dispossession. The Estate of Gordon Bennett. Gordon Bennett (1955- 2014) was born in Monto, Queensland. However, for Bennett, dot painting also became a powerful expression of the connections between nature and culture, which are integral to representation in Aboriginal art. The grotesque in art is generally associated with bizarre, ugly or disturbing imagery. Theosophy means god wisdom, the belief that everything living or dead was put together from basic blocks that lead towards consciousness. Mondrian, a Dutch De Stijl artist and a Theosophist, used art to search empirical truths and their source. He used strategies such as deconstruction and appropriation to present audiences with new ways of viewing and understanding the images and narratives that have shaped the nations history and culture. In Altered body print (Shadow figure howling at the moon) Bennett focuses more explicitly on binary opposites and the associations they trigger. The coming of the light refers ironically to a term used by Torres Strait Islanders to describe the arrival of the missionaries who brought Christianity to the Islands in 1871. However behind the neat facade and pleasantries of suburban life, Bennett was haunted by racism and the same derogatory opinions of Aboriginal people that he quietly endured in the workforce. This painting is based on Samuel Calverts 19th-century etching Captain Cook Taking Possession of the Australian Continent on Behalf of the British Crown, AD 1770, itself a copy of a lost painting by John Alexander Gilfillan. Bennett establishes him as the focal point. Buildings and planes collide. The central image is a reworking of an earlier painting completed at art college, The persistence of language, 1987, painted in the style of Basquiat. Gordon Bennetts Possession Island 1991, highlights the influence that visual images have on our understanding of history, and the way that visual images often reflect the values of the social / historical context in which they are made. In Calverts etching, an Aboriginal man holds a drinks tray. People tend to focus on the emotional aspect rather than the conceptual when interpreting my work, and that bothers me. Bennett continued to work in new ways with materials, techniques and images throughout his career. 2,038 Sq. Discuss with reference to examples in at least two works by Bennett. By overlaying perspective diagrams on images constructed according to the conventions of perspective, such as the landscape in Requiem, Bennett reminds us of the learned and culturally specific systems that influence knowledge and perception. It alludes to ownership and territory. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007. This image is based on a photograph by JW Lindt (1845 1926). Looking at the image from different viewpoints helps us to discover different perspectives. ), Heide Museum of Modern Art , Melbourne, 2004 pp. Include reference to specific examples in your discussion. Such imagery has often been used by artists to unsettle the viewer and present new perspectives on familiar subjects. Narratives of exploration, colonisation and settlement failed to recognise the sovereign rights (or sovereignty) of Australias Indigenous people. In Interior (Abstract eye), 1991 a diagrammatic grid overlays an image depicting a group of Aboriginal people in the landscape, seemingly appropriated from a social studies text. Bennett repositions the subject of the painting in other ways too, by including black footprints that diminish into the background of the composition. Select two artworks by Gordon Bennett that interest you and discuss how the artists personal background, postcolonialism and/or postmodernism provide a framework for the meanings, ideas and/or formal qualities you find in the artworks. Sell with Artsy Artist Series Portraits of Artists and Sculptors 113 available Portraits of Artists and Sculptors His use of the perspective diagrams to frame and contain the figure of his mother alludes to the impact the values and systems of European culture have had on the lives of Indigenous people. The Notes to Basquiat series takes appropriation to yet another level within Bennetts art practice. Collection: Museum of Sydney, Sydney Living Museums The Estate of Gordon Bennett The powerful image/word I AM, while central, is accompanied by statements of opposite, I am light I am dark. Within the Home dcor series Gordon Bennett escalates the sampling and quoting of other artists and works to develop a pastiche. Identity is fixed and self is understood in the context of words such as Abo, Boong, Coon and Darkie . Although there are many forms of Aboriginal art, dot painting is widely seen as synonymous with Aboriginal art since the late 1970s, when the dot painting of the Western Desert attracted unprecedented national and international interest in Aboriginal art. Inspired, Pollock removed the canvas from the easel and worked with it flat on the floor, using movement and gesture to flick and drip paint onto the canvas. He was born in New York, May 10th 1841 and died 4 days after his 77th Birthday in Beaulieu near Nizza/France. James Gordon Bennett Many a good newspaper story has been ruined by over verification. I needed to change direction at least for a while. Queensland-born, Bennett (1955-2014) was deeply engaged with questions of identity, perception and the construction of history, and made a profound and ongoing contribution to contemporary art in Australia and internationally. Gewerblich. Inspired by African and Iberian art, he also contributed to the rise of Surrealism and Expressionism. The purer the bloodlines, the more Aboriginal you were. 35, 36. 3 Baths. Bennett used Blue Poles to recall this period of change. 2 February 2021. 20-21, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, p. 33, Ian McLean, Towards an Australian postcolonial art in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, p. 99, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe in The Art of Gordon Bennett, p. 22, Zara Stanhope, How do you think it feels? in Three Colours , Gordon Bennett & Peter Robinson (exh. Bennett handed over command of his division and left the island. Gordon Bennett 2. Gordon Bennett 1, Bennetts Aboriginal heritage came through his mother. marking the first car ever to touch the island's soil. EUR 7,81. Typical of Bennetts early work, the painting appropriates an existing picture, in this case an historical painting, and transforms the content with carefully considered signs of Aboriginal identity. Bennett used this symbol because: What emerges for all who take part in this piece is in fact an examination of the self. His use of I AM emphasises this. Bennett simultaneously obscures and draws attention to the Aboriginal man standing next to Cook, overlaying an abstract geometric shape which recalls constructivist art and the Aboriginal flag. Das Jahr 1904 brachte mit dem Gordon-Bennett-Rennen in Deutschland und dem Vanderbilt Cup in den USA einen weiteren Aufschwung des Motorsports vor allem auch auerhalb Frankreichs, wobei fr das Rennen in New York erstmals europische Fahrer und Rennstlle nach bersee gereist waren. He carefully staged each image in his studio, posing the sitter against a painted backdrop. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007. List some of your own qualities and attributes. The pair of outstretched arms and the diagrammatic outline of a cross- like form in the central panel of Triptych: Requieum, Of grandeur, Empire, 1989 alludes to the figure of Christ crucified on the cross, a common subject in Christian art. If God cannot be contained, can humanity be contained by stereotypes and labels? Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA). Neither had I thought to question the representation of Aborigines as the quintessential primitive Other against which the civilized collective Self of my peers was measured. He tried a career as an actuarial clerk, attending Hawthorn College after Balwyn State School. An Anthology of writings on Australian Art in the 1980s & 1990s, IMA Publishing, 2004, p. 273, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett Craftsman House, 1996, p. 58, Kelly Gellatly, Citizen in the making, p.18, Kelly Gellatly, Citizen in the making, p. 17, John Citizen artist profile, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne http://www.suttongallery.com.au/artists/artistprofile.php?id=39 accessed 29/11/07, Conversation Bill Wright talks to Gordon Bennett, in Kelly Gellatly with contributions by Bill Wright, Justin Clemens and Jane Devery, Gordon Bennett (exhib. Bennett not only used Basquiat images, but begins to paint in his style. Lindt created many photographic portraits of Aboriginal subjects. Create an artwork in a medium of your choice that highlights how the meanings, values and ideas associated with these binary opposites influence perception and understanding. This education resource accompanies the retrospective exhibition Gordon Bennett (2008) which showcased 85 works by this internationally acclaimed Australian artist. Explain how you believe Bennett communicates and presents questions and complexities in his work. In the Christian tradition light is associated with goodness and righteousness while darkness is associated with evil. However, in each image the grid effectively highlights the controlled order and structure of knowledge systems and learning in Western culture, and how these frame and influence perception and understanding of self, history and culture. In a conceptual sense I was liberated from the binary prison of self and other; the wall had disintegrated but where was I? I have tried to avoid any simplistic critical containment or stylistic categorisation as an Aboriginal artist producing Aboriginal art by consistently changing stylistic directions and by producing work that does not sit easily in the confines of Aboriginal art collections or definitions. Discuss with reference to Possession Island. 5. But the mathematical formulation of linear perspective in the fifteenth century had a powerful influence on the representation of space in Western art from this point. The background colours and features of the landscape in each panel of Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire suggest a vast Australian desert . This activity could be done as a group activity with different students researching different dates/events and presenting talks to the class about their significance. It is said that as a concession to Ireland ( because racing was illegal on British public roads) the British adopted shamrock green as their racing colour. Bennett's art engages with historical and contemporary questions of cultural and personal identity, with a specific focus on Australia's colonial past and its postcolonial present. In many images of the crucifixion, including the painting by Veneziano illustrated, Mary Magdalene is kneeling at the foot of the cross washing and anointing Christs feet in an act of devotion . | Tate Images. The artist Gordon Bennett led a reclusive life. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung People as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the NGV is built. Bennett indicates the need to be reconciled within the context of culture and history to develop a full sense of identity. From early in his career he was inspired by theories and ideas associated with postmodernism. One reason is that I felt I had gone as far as I could with the postcolonial project I was working through. Citizens more recent work includes a series of interiors inspired by the decorator and home magazines that circulate widely in popular culture. His sudden death came just one week after the opening of the 8th Berlin Biennale, where a series of Bennett's never-before exhibited drawings from the early 1990s are currently on view. Early life [ edit] I decided that I was in a very interesting position: My mind and body had been effectively colonised by Western culture, and yet my Aboriginality, which had been historically, socially and personally repressed, was still part of me and I was obtaining the tools and language to explore it on my own terms. . Pollock becomes a catalyst for transformation. While Bennetts art is grounded in his personal struggle for identity as an Australian of Aboriginal and AngloCeltic descent, it presents and examines a broad range of philosophical questions related to the construction of identity, perception and knowledge. 3233, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, p. 33, Gordon Bennett & Chris McAuliffe, Interview with Gordon Bennett in Rex Bulter (Ed.) At the same time I have resisted being positioned as a spokesperson for my people since I do not have nor do I seek, such a mandate by declining to speak about my work. Possession Island (Abstraction), Gordon Bennett, 1991, Oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas. Bennett presents each image with a single word, written in capitals, that boldly asserts a new meaning for them. Bennett lodges this image in layers of dots and slashes of red and yellow paint that refer to other artists and images. However Bennetts use of the black square in this and other works also reflect his ongoing interest in the work of the influential Russian abstract artist Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935). Traditional ideas about an artists individual or signature style are further confounded in Bennetts art practice by the his appropriation or sampling of the distinctive styles of other artists, including Jackson Pollock (191256), Margaret Preston ( 18751963) and Piet Mondrian (18721944). Some of Prestons appropriations however, demeaned and trivialised the way Aborigines were depicted and understood. Born in 1955 in Monto, Queensland, Gordon Bennett lived and worked in Brisbane before his unexpected death in 2014. He described his upbringing as overwhelmingly Euro-Australian, with never a word spoken about my Aboriginal heritage. Sutton Gallery. Gordon Bennett 1. Outsider depicts, a decapitated Aboriginal figure standing over Vincent van Goghs bed, with red paint streaming skywards to join with the vortex of Vincents starry night. Consider what dates/events should be included in your timeline and why. The Bicentenary celebrations triggered increased activism, protests and public debate related to Indigenous issues. Picassos sizable oeuvre grew to include over 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures,ceramics, theater sets, and costume designs. Cooee Art Auctions works with artists bi-annually across two separate departments - Indigenous Fine Art and Modern & Contemporary Fine Art. Bennett's work is held in over 100 public and private collections, including many major state institutions such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. [Bennett] seeks to expose the shadows of official history, to track its doubles and contradictions, not in order to repudiate the European vision but to map a postcolonial future Ian McLean 2. The grotesque also interested Bennett as a means of disrupting conventional ways of seeing and understanding. This canvas is loosely divided into three parts. Different members of the class could be assigned different cultural traditions to research and then prepare an illustrated presentation for the class. This artwork is constructed of obvious layers: The layers of dots, reminiscent of Aboriginal Western Desert dot painting, with lines of perspective a Western tradition. While 2007 was a brilliant year for Bennett's secondary market results, with eight works sold of which . It is interesting to note that this same year was declared a period of mourning by Aboriginal people. This is the second of two works entitled Possession Island that Bennett painted following Australias bicentennial celebrations in 1988. The men also paint their bodies in red, yellow, white and black, or in feather down stuck with human blood when they dress up, and make music with a didgeridoo. Bennett adopted several strategies to resist the narrow framework through which he as an artist and his work were viewed. I am purposely not defining him only as Aboriginal because he himself does not want to be defined only as such. Gordon Bennett (9 October 1955 - 3 June 2014) [1] was an Australian artist of Aboriginal and Anglo-Celtic descent. Kelly Gellatly 5, By the mid 1990s, Gordon Bennett came to feel he was in an untenable position. The Constitution is being rethought with respect to Indigenous Australians, and treaty-making is on the agenda yet the Uluru Statement from the Heart was roundly ignored by the Federal Government. Felicity Allen, Gordon Bennett interviewed by Felicity Allen in the. He and his partner bought a house and settled in the suburbs of Brisbane like other young couples. Like many others at that time, Bennett was inspired by the work of the historian Henry Reynolds. Gordon Bennett, an Australian Aboriginal artist, demonstrates this theory through his work. In your discussion consider meanings and ideas associated with, Compare your interpretation and analysis with others related to this artwork (this could be an interpretation by someone else in your class, or in a commentary on the work in gallery, book, catalogue etc. Bennett was concerned that his identity and work was seen as coming from a narrow framework. Ian McLean 2. Who was Paul Keating? Calverts image becomes one of the layers of the painting. are they representative of different cultural identities)? Van Goghs original bedroom evokes a feeling of peace and harmony. He used his self as the vehicle to do so. One hand holds a torch a symbol of Enlightenment values that is also seen in The Statue of Liberty in New York that sheds light on darkness. Literally opening up this black skin of paint are the words cut me. The motivation behind the abstract paintings was complex but in part it reflects Bennetts ongoing concerns about issues related to the reception of his work. Place each photograph on a separate layer, overlap and morph or merge all the portraits into one image. Finally, Ive never been one to make art about art before. The images include historical footage of Indigenous people and details of some of Bennetts own paintings. Jackson Pollock is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Lichtenstein 19231987). His status as an artist has been elevated to hero with his contribution to Action Painting. It recalls the way stereotypes, labels, identities and systems of thought are fixed. L120238 Gordon Bennett. 'Bloodlines' Kelly Gellatly 3. 1 Bill Wrights interview with Gordon Bennett in Gellatly K with contributions by Clemens, Justin; Devery, Jane; and Wright, Bill Gordon Bennett National Gallery of Victoria exhibition catalogue, Melbourne, 2007, During his childhood in the 1950s and 60s, Bennett lived with his family in Victoria and Queensland. Gordon Bennett, The Manifestoe, Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett. His joy . Image: Gordon Bennett, Australia 1955-2014, Possession Island, 1991. What strategies have been used to communicate and explore these themes and ideas in the book/film? In the following year he was awarded the prestigious Mot et Chandon prize with his painting The Nine Ricochets (Fall down black fella, jump up white fella), 1990. Other aspects of the image, including the flat, stylised shapes of the head, reflect connections to both Western abstract art and Indigenous art traditions. The triptych form of painting is most commonly associated with the altarpiece paintings made for Christian churches. Identify other artists who have used dots in their work (ie. There are a number of reasons why I began painting abstract paintings that focused on overt visual phenomena, as opposed to explicit visual content. These images include scenes featuring tall ships, the landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, and several scenes that reveal the violence and tension that often characterised the relationship between colonisers and the colonised. The distorted and exaggerated features of the form incorporate qualities that appear animal and human, male and female. While these may indicate the way maps are constructed to find different locations, they also represent the first letter of racial slurs. He had identified with the experience of the fair complexioned, African-American conceptual artist Adrian Piper, who wrote: Blacks like me are unwilling observers of the forms racism takes when racists believe there are no blacks present. These act as disturbances. The resource provides frameworks for exploring key issues and ideas in Bennetts art practice. Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, pp. The word DISPERSE was used by the colonisers to represent the killing of Aboriginal people. The mirror at the bottom left-hand corner of the painting represents Bennetts own shaving mirror. In Unassailable heroes (Sweet Damper) Famous since Captain Cook, 1996 the motifs and symbols suggest issues and questions related to history and representation that concern Bennett.
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