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However these ideas and values simultaneously oppressed Indigenous people and their cultural and knowledge systems. For more information, visit: www.qagoma.qld.gov.au for details. How have these sciences influenced the perception and understanding of Indigenous people and cultures? His status as an artist has been elevated to hero with his contribution to Action Painting. This painting combines the story of Bennetts mother, and other young Aboriginal women in the care of the government or church, with the Christian story. Do you agree? After 2003 he moved away from figurative language to work in an abstract idiom (see Number Nine 2008, Tate T15515). Every object is carefully and clearly painted, yet the images conceptually blur together as they intersect and interlace through the grid, across the canvas. Traditionally these arches were built by the Romans to celebrate victory in war. But the oppressive and restrictive laws that governed the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia until the late 1960s continued to impose on her life. Pinterest. Other significant works: Gordon Bennett, Possession Island; Glenn Brown, The Day The World Turned Auerbach; Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living; Glenn Ligon, Notes on the Margin of the Black Book; Gabriel Orozco, Crazy Tourist; Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View Here Bennett raises questions and matters about the stories that define us personally and culturally, and about the complex relationship that has existed between the Christian church and Indigenous cultures through history. In Notes to Basquiat (Jackson Pollock and his other) 2001, Bennett confronts these issues within a global context. The grand Romantic landscapes of Western art were intended to inspire the viewer with their dramatic beauty and effects of illusion. The critical and aesthetic strategies of postmodernism have had significant impact on the development of his art practice. But in Bennetts painting disparate diagrams, symbols and images disrupt the illusion, presenting the landscape as a site where many ideas and viewpoints compete. . Perhaps a re-writing of history? Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA). I was certainly aware of it by the time I was sixteen years old after having been in the workforce for twelve months. This is similar to the way a Pointillist painting can only be seen effectively from a distance to bring the image into focus. Gordon Bennett Possession Island - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf) or read online for free. The soundtrack includes digital sampling of ICE.Ts Race War. It speaks of colonial violence and the consequences of being on the 'wrong' side of history, purchased in 2019, this powerful and sobering work is a major acquisition for the QAGOMA Collection. It demonstrates Bennetts understanding of the power of this image. But this approach is central to the way many people describe and analyse his work. For Bennett, however, success triggered concerns related to the links drawn between his identity as an Indigenous person, his subject matter and the reception of his work. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007. He is not disturbed by slashes of paint, but painted carefully and outlined by the precise grid behind him. 4. 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. This includes a focus on the role and power of language, including visual representations, in shaping identity, culture and history. 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. The mirror, a recurring symbol within his work, is not a two- dimensional illusion but a literal construct. The mirror at the bottom left-hand corner of the painting represents Bennetts own shaving mirror. They are strategically and prominently placed at the centre top of each panel, each radiating an aura of light created by white dots. ww2dbase Henry Gordon Bennett was born in Balwyn, a suburb of Melbourne, near the close of the nineteenth century. Bennett lodges this image in layers of dots and slashes of red and yellow paint that refer to other artists and images. Strange to think of Gordon Bennett as an almost classical figure in contemporary Australian art. As a self- portrait, the artist seems to be present everywhere within the installation but is in fact nowhere. In her lifetime, Trugannini witnessed the systematic and often violent destruction of her culture and people. In the past Quadroon, was a socially acceptable term used to label Indigenous people as a way of establishing genetic heredity. Gordon Bennett Australia 1955-2014. cat. EUR 99,99. dresden-de (52.329) 100%. In Malevichs work the black square is seen as having a strong and even spiritual presence. Possession Island 1991 was recently purchased by the Historic Houses Trust of NSW. Blood is a potent symbol and has historically been a measure of Aboriginality. 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. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007. I didnt go to art college to graduate as an Aboriginal Artist. Curated by Zara StanhopeThe intelligence and passion of Gordon Bennett's politically committed post-appropriation art struck a chord with the postcolonial ambitions of the 1990s. The effect is that they dissolve into a mass of colour, dots and slashes of paint . Fundamentally, he deconstructed history to question the truth of the past. New perspectives on familiar images and stories are presented. ), Heide Museum of Modern Art , Melbourne, 2004 pp. There are a number of reasons why I began painting abstract paintings that focused on overt visual phenomena, as opposed to explicit visual content. . Self portrait (But I always wanted to be one of the good guys), 1990 questions how stereotypes create a sense of identity. These binary opposites insider/outsider, black/white, primitive/civilised have had a powerful influence on perceptions of European and Indigenous people and culture. Lists of words draw the viewer into a game of word association. Some supporters applauded his escape but his claim that he left to pass on his knowledge about how to fight the Japanese - given his lack of success . The coming of the light also explores ideas, issues and questions related to the Enlightenment values central to colonialism. Include in your discussion reference to Bennetts appropriation of The nine shots 1985 by Imants Tillers. Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, pp. He described his upbringing as overwhelmingly Euro-Australian, with never a word spoken about my Aboriginal heritage. Gordon Bennett, born on 16 April 1887 at Balwyn, Melbourne, was Australia's most controversial Second World War commander. The dresser draw labelled self is closed while the drawers for history and culture are ajar. References This image is based on a photograph by JW Lindt (1845 1926). While 2007 was a brilliant year for Bennett's secondary market results, with eight works sold of which . Why might such an organisation purchase this painting? The images include historical footage of Indigenous people and details of some of Bennetts own paintings. It is open to self revelation, self redemption and a myriad of rich images of self that can be built upon. Often describing his own practice of borrowing images as quoting, Bennett re-contextualised existing images to challenge the viewer to question and see alternative perspectives. Gordon Bennett, The Manifestoe, Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett. Such images have defined the nations settlement history for many generations of Australians. Bennetts interest in adopting a strategy of intervention and disturbance in the field of representation manifests in many different ways in his art. In Possession Island No 2 this figure is concealed and transformed into an abstract totem or geometric monument coloured with the signature black, red and yellow of the Aboriginal flag. Gordon Bennett 6, I first learnt about Aborigines in primary school, as part of the social studies curriculum I learnt that Aborigines had dark brown skin, thin limbs, thick lips, black hair and dark brown eyes. 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. Picassos sizable oeuvre grew to include over 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures,ceramics, theater sets, and costume designs. Gordon Bennett 3. Finally, Ive never been one to make art about art before. I decided that I would attempt to create a space by adopting a strategy of intervention and disturbance in the field of representation through my art. Fri. 10-9, Sat. The early 'Possession Island' (Abstraction))' 1991 was one choice. Another reason was to make people aware that I am an artist first and not a professional Aborigine. Egyptian painting or relief sculpture, Chinese scroll paintings, Aboriginal painting of the Western Desert. Pollock was influenced by Navaho sand paintings, which were created on the ground. Bennett used 9/11 and its global impact three months after the event as the stage for his discourse on cultural identity. For example, Aboriginal deaths in custody was recognised as a significant issue. At the same time his work demonstrates great conceptual unity and interconnectedness. 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. Bennett employs this system using diagrams often labelled with acronyms, such as CVP (central vanishing point), that refer to key features of the system. I am that I am, Exodus 3:14 is God naming self. Choose a selfportrait by Gordon Bennett that interests you. This education resource accompanies the retrospective exhibition Gordon Bennett (2008) which showcased 85 works by this internationally acclaimed Australian artist. This image also translates to mean: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. In The coming of the light, 1987 the high- rise buildings that frame the white faces are represented as grid-like forms. He found this liberating. James Gordon Bennett Quotes - BrainyQuote American - Editor May 10, 1841 - May 14, 1918 I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one. Possession Island displays a photocopy of Samuel Calvert's engraving, Captain Cook . However, Bennetts ongoing investigation into questions of identity, perception and knowledge, has involved a range of subjects drawn from both history and contemporary culture, and both national and international contexts. Perhaps the most influential artist of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso may be best known for pioneering Cubism and fracturing the two-dimensional picture plane in order to convey three-dimensional space. Bennetts distinctive visual language repositions the subject of the work, claiming the Aboriginal perspective as central to the historical moment of the original painting. Include reference to specific examples in your discussion. Like many others at that time, Bennett was inspired by the work of the historian Henry Reynolds. Victorious soldiers triumphantly and ceremoniously paraded under such arches, sometimes accompanied by their captives. These images are fused and overlapped in a dynamic composition underpinned by Mondrian-style grids. It confronts the bigotry and discrimination suffered by Aborigines, using a rich visual language based in both Aboriginal and Western traditions. 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. McCahon uses I AM to question notions of faith. This central motif governs the composition which, similar to Calverts original etching upon which the painting is based, is largely reduced to a schema of black and white forms. He serves as a counterpoint to Gordon Bennetts Other, and yet we are the one and the same. a moment of possession; the place where he came ashore and allegedly claimed . The timeline could be presented in hardcopy for display in the classroom, or as an ICT project incorporating images and audio. 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. Gordon Bennett, Possession Island #2, 1991. That was to be the extent of my formal education on Aborigines and Aboriginal culture until Art College. What legal, moral and ethical rights does an artist have to control the way their work is seen and viewed in exhibitions, books or online. These visual representations of history present the colonisers as powerful figures and as the bearers of learning and civilisation in a land of primitive people who have no obvious learning or culture. Ft. 2707 Coral Shores Dr, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306. His "history painting," as he called his large-scale canvases at the time, provoked a radical revision of Australia's past, fueling the meteoric rise of a career that left an indelible mark on Australian art . As one of the dispossessed within this biased history, he claims that his only tool to combat this bias was the art of mimicry. Looking closely at the central panel we realise that the luminous sky is described with the dots that Bennett used in early works to signify Aboriginal art. In 2003, Bennett embarked on a series of non-representational abstract paintings, marking a dramatic shift in his art practice, formally and conceptually. JeanMichel Basquiat, crowned a black urban artist, was well known for his spontaneous and gestural paintings, which reflect the artists involvement in the graffiti culture of the United States. Such accolades and critical recognition are keenly sought by many artists. There was always some sense of social engagement. Such imagery has often been used by artists to unsettle the viewer and present new perspectives on familiar subjects. These contrasting and complex meanings and ideas are not accidental. It is uttered by all good Muslims before a good deed. 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. An orphan from a very young age, she was raised on Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission in Queensland, and later trained as a domestic at Singleton. A long-distance hot-air balloon race (The International Gordon Bennett balloon race), which still continues, was inaugurated by him in 1906. It is also a direct reference to biblical stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. In a real sense I was still living in the suburbs, and in a world where there were very real demands to be one thing or the other. Nearby Recently Sold Homes. Born in Monto, Queensland, Bennett was a significant figure in contemporary Indigenous Australian art . The persistence of language references the way language controls and defines how we understand ourselves and our world. 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. She attempted to create works that reflected a sense of national identity by incorporating Aboriginal motifs and colours in her work. They reference the massacres of Aboriginal people in Myth of the Western man (White man's burden) (1992) and The nine ricochets (Fall down black fella, Jump up white fella (1990) and question the valorising of Captain Cook in Big Romantic Painting (Apotheosis of Captain Cook) (1993) and Possession Island (1991). There are many visual signs that recur throughout Bennetts artworks, including: Each of these signs brings significant meaning to Bennetts work and plays an important role in his investigation of issues and ideas related to identity, understanding and perception. His work also includes performance art, video, photography and printmaking. We would like to hear from you. Bennetts referencing, appropriation and recontextualisation of familiar images and art styles challenges conventional ways of viewing and thinking and opens up new possibilities for understanding the subjects he explored. Bennett also includes copies and samples of his own work, such as Possession Island and Big Romantic painting (The Apotheosis of Captain Cook) 1993, with other found images. Gordon Bennett 2. It was upon entering the workforce that I really learnt how low the general opinion of Aboriginal people was. Ian McLean 2. Who was Paul Keating? The 'cancel culture' debate winds me up. Six years after his death at the age of 58, his Much of Bennetts work has been concerned with an interrogation of Australias colonial past and postcolonial present, including issues associated with the dominant role that white, western culture has played in constructing the social and cultural landscape of the nation. If God cannot be contained, can humanity be contained by stereotypes and labels? Are these qualities perceived as positive? The only clearly defined part of Possession Island is the black skinned male figure in the centre. Australian politics is fraught yet the Australian public is disengaged. Gordon Bennett 1. In Possession Island, 1991, Bennett meticulously photocopies and enlarges Calverts image so that it can be projected, cropped and copied onto the canvas. Bennett confronts and questions the appropriateness of this borrowing. What is your personal interpretation of the meaning and ideas in The coming of the light or Untitled ? 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. For many Aboriginal Australians, these celebrations were instead received as a period of mourning and a time to remember the devastating consequences of colonisation on Aboriginal people. His use of I AM emphasises this. Pollock becomes a catalyst for transformation. Gordon Bennett explores these ideas in Self portrait: Interior/ Exterior , 1992. Perhaps in this sense Citizen represents an Australian everyman who recognises the wrongs of history and racist representations, but who has no real interest in going any further in asking hard questions about why they happened and what impact they caused. 1 0-5-30 j RED STAR Now 35 oft on all RED STARRED SIWFMIMUIS IliMMS . Watch. However, he offers more than one interpretation of the grids use, which is indicated by the sampling of works by Australian artist Margaret Preston . You have to understand my position of having no designs or images or stories on which to draw to assert my Aboriginality. He gave several sponsorships in these fields, notably the Isle of Man Bennett Trophy races of 1900 to 1905 (subsequently a trials course on the island was named after him). The title of the work itself is unsettling. 2. Reynolds wrote books and articles about the history of Australian settlement as a story of invasion and genocide. Sutton Gallery. Gordon Bennett POSSESSION ISLAND 1991 Titled, dated (1992) and signed by the artist on each panel and bears various exhibition related inscriptions and labels on the stretchers, and inscribed with date of completion 29.12.91 on the reverse of the right panel Synthetic polymer paint on canvas (diptych) 162 by 130 cm each panel, 162 by 260 cm overall Gordon Bennett's painting Possession Island (Abstraction) 1991 is based on an image of Captain Cook claiming the eastern coast of Australia in 1770. Theyre buried, and this is a way of bringing them back into memory, but remembered in a different way from the way that I was taught, looking at them from a different angle and looking at how they work, where they came from initially, and how these images still support contemporary stereotypes, etc. Find examples of the work of these artists. His art attempts to depict the complexity of both cultural perspectives. The work is a copy of a copy of a copy. Mixing of pure blood with European blood was feared by Europeans, authenticity was at risk and identity diluted. The titles of Bennetts artworks reflect the artists awareness of the power of words/language to suggest meaning. Gordon Bennett (1955-2014) is one of Australia's most important contemporary artists, and his works have received increasing critical acclaim over the past years - culminating with his retrospective exhibition at the QAGOMA in Brisbane, 'Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett'. Bennett also had ongoing concerns about how his Aboriginal identity and his interest in subjects related to Aboriginality were framing and hence limiting the way his artistic identity and his work were perceived. In this work Bennett directly references historical British sources, namely Samuel Calverts (18281913) colour etching Captain Cook Taking Possession of the Australian Continent on Behalf of the British Crown AD 1770 c.185364 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), which is itself a copy of John Alexander Gilfillans (17931864) earlier, now lost, painting of the same title. Preston envisioned the creation of an Australian aesthetic. I had never thought to question those narratives and I certainly had never been taught at school to question them only to believe them. I found people were always confusing me as a person with the content of my work. How does Bennetts use of appropriation reflect an interest in some of the moral and ethical issues associated with this practice. The Estate of Gordon Bennett. It was no accident that Bennett used this event to question the way history is written and interpreted. From early in his career he was inspired by theories and ideas associated with postmodernism.