From his father, a Scottish . But in Bennetts painting disparate diagrams, symbols and images disrupt the illusion, presenting the landscape as a site where many ideas and viewpoints compete. Every object is carefully and clearly painted, yet the images conceptually blur together as they intersect and interlace through the grid, across the canvas. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007. His use of I AM emphasises this. He acknowledged that much of his work was autobiographical, but he emphasises that there was conceptual distance involved in his art making . The coming of the light also explores ideas, issues and questions related to the Enlightenment values central to colonialism. It is appropriation of an image that has already been copied with an image that has become central in the pysche of an Australian history. James Gordon Bennett was born on a farm near Enzie, around three miles from Buckie, in 1795 but chose to follow a friend to North America when aged 24 with just 5 in his pocket. Particularly when academics claim that they are afraid of expressing their 'true' findings for fear of losing their careers. I was certainly aware of it by the time I was sixteen years old after having been in the workforce for twelve months. Born in 1955 in Monto, Queensland, Gordon Bennett lived and worked in Brisbane before his unexpected death in 2014. In the third panel of Bennetts triptych, Empire, a Roman triumphal arch frames a stately figure. From a distance the figure resembles a sculpture of a heroic Classical figure. 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. Blood is a potent symbol and has historically been a measure of Aboriginality. He and his partner bought a house and settled in the suburbs of Brisbane like other young couples. Why might such an organisation purchase this painting? Australia for His Majesty King George III. In September 2017, Bennett's 1991 Possession Island was unveiled at London's Tate Modern. These are paintings about painting. L120238 Gordon Bennett. Explain. Bennett continued to work in new ways with materials, techniques and images throughout his career. 1 0-5-30 j RED STAR Now 35 oft on all RED STARRED SIWFMIMUIS IliMMS . James Gordon Bennett, Sr., a Scottish immigrant, founded the New York Herald in 1835, building the paper from the ground up. 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. The viewer is made to step back and allow the eyes to form the images. Gordon Bennett Possession Island (Abstraction), 1991 Oil and acrylic on canvas 71 7/10 71 7/10 in | 182 182 cm Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) The Rocks Get notifications for similar works Create Alert Want to sell a work by this artist? The repression of Aboriginal heritage that Bennett experienced was reinforced by an education system and society dominated by a history built on the belief in Australia as terra nullius. James Gordon Bennett Many a good newspaper story has been ruined by over verification. Choose a selfportrait by Gordon Bennett that interests you. 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. Buildings and planes collide. Discover Gordon Bennett's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Do you agree? 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. Basquiats signature crown hovers beneath a tag-like image of fire. Gordon Bennett Possession Island , 1991 Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas 162 x 260cm Museum of Sydney Gordon Bennett The Coming of the Light , 1987 Acrylic on canvas 152 x 274cm Queensland Art Gallery Collection All Artworks Subscribe Submit Follow Sutton Gallery 254 Brunswick Street Fitzroy 3065 This culminated in the Notes to Basquiat series in 2003. It was no accident that Bennett used this event to question the way history is written and interpreted. Among these was the harrowing struggle for identity that ensued from the repression and denial of his Aboriginal heritage. It was upon entering the workforce that I really learnt how low the general opinion of Aboriginal people was. The word DISPERSE was used by the colonisers to represent the killing of Aboriginal people. ), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2007, p. 97, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, pp. Looking at the image from different viewpoints helps us to discover different perspectives. Art about art seems appropriate for the time being. He can be anything the viewer wants him to be: white, black or any shade in between, as was true of Australian citizens in general in our multicultural country. The Whitlam Government abolished the last remnants of the White Australia policy, established diplomatic relations with China and advocated Aboriginal land rights, to name just a few of these changes. 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. 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). This is similar to the way a Pointillist painting can only be seen effectively from a distance to bring the image into focus. Collect a range of images (both art and media sources) that depict characters that are perceived or presented as typically Australian. Explore. Possession Island displays a photocopy of Samuel Calvert's engraving, Captain Cook . 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. Investigate the theories and ideas associated with anthropology, ethnography and phrenology. Gordon Bennett Possession Island (Abstraction) 1991 In Tate Modern Level 3: A Year in Art: Australia 1992 Level 3: A Year in Art: Australia 1992 Artist Gordon Bennett 1955-2014 Medium Oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas Dimensions Support: 1843 1845 mm Collection Tate Acquisition Bennett establishes him as the focal point. Appropriation was a tool that enabled him to open up and re-define stereotypes and bias. 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. How might John Citizen be seen as reflection of the post Keating era? In 1999 Bennett adopted an alter ego and began making and exhibiting Pop Art inspired images under the name of John Citizen, a persona representative of the Australian Mr Average. The I am from Self portrait (But I always wanted to be one of the good guys) is replaced with We all are. The absence of the Aboriginal servant and the scuttling footprints in Possession Island No 2 suggest the physical dispossession that was to follow once the British claimed ownership of the land. There is strong symbolism associated with the placement of the figure beneath the Roman triumphal arch. He lived and worked in Brisbane. He tried a career as an actuarial clerk, attending Hawthorn College after Balwyn State School. 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. 4. The purer the bloodlines, the more Aboriginal you were. The Stripe series of abstract paintings represents a kind of freedom for me as an artist. Gordon Bennett 3. It was no accident that Bennett used Pollocks Blue Poles: Number 11. These paintings reflect Bennetts belief that after the Notes to Basquiat series of 2003, I had gone as far I could with the postcolonial project I was working through1. 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. Image credit: Gordon Bennett - Possession Island (1991). The dynamic juxtaposition of images, sound and other effects made possible by video, introduced new dimensions to Bennetts investigation of issues and ideas related to identity, history and language. Viewed in this context, the black square in Untitled could be seen as a resilient black presence, asserting itself in the settlement narrative that Bennett deconstructed. 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. Pollock was influenced by Navaho sand paintings, which were created on the ground. Some of Prestons appropriations however, demeaned and trivialised the way Aborigines were depicted and understood. This allowed him to utilise professional capture, editing and special effects software, to expand his art practice to include video and performance work. "I want a future that lives up to my past": the words from David McDiarmid's iconic poster reverberate now, as we ponder the past year and think ah. are they representative of different cultural identities)? Aim to use a variety of strategies in your work to engage the viewer in the issues and questions you are interested in exploring in relation to these binary opposites. Physically, the kitsch Aboriginal motifs copied from Preston are trapped. Bennett achieved critical success early in his career. Why do artists such as Gordon Bennett and Tracey Moffatt (b.1960) systematically decline to participate in exhibitions of Aboriginal art? Bennett has continued to work in new ways with materials, techniques and images throughout his career, resisting any classification or confinement according to style. Cooee Art Auctions works with artists bi-annually across two separate departments - Indigenous Fine Art and Modern & Contemporary Fine Art. Felicity Allen, Gordon Bennett interviewed by Felicity Allen in the. In her lifetime, Trugannini witnessed the systematic and often violent destruction of her culture and people. The 'cancel culture' debate winds me up. At the heart of the artwork of Gordon Bennett is a journey to find that self amidst the cultural and historical inequities created by European settlement in Australia. Bennetts art is not always easy to look at. 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. Pollock becomes a catalyst for transformation. 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. James Gordon Bennett The powerful image/word I AM, while central, is accompanied by statements of opposite, I am light I am dark. The installation is filled with images of his family and Constructivist-style drawings made by the artist. What does this comment suggest to you about the purpose of Bennetts questioning of history? 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 . 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 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. This approach to his work resists any classification or confinement according to style. He quotes directly from this image, which is in fact a copy of a copy, as Samuel Calvert copied this image of Captain Cook landing in Botany Bay from an image by Gilfillan, which is now lost. Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings $45.00 Quantity Edited by Angela Goddard and Tim Riley Walsh A co-publication from Power Publications and Griffith University Art Museum Paperback with dust jacket RRP $45.00 AUD ISBN 978--909952-01-3 66 images, including colour plates 216 pp 297 x 210 mm 890 gms 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. Bennett presents each image with a single word, written in capitals, that boldly asserts a new meaning for them. Our experiences in this society manifest themselves in neuroses, demoralization, anger, and in art. Altarpiece paintings traditionally occupied a central position in a church. They absorb the flow of blood and recall the symbols often used in Aboriginal dot painting of the Western Desert to represent significant sites. Citizens more recent work includes a series of interiors inspired by the decorator and home magazines that circulate widely in popular culture. Discuss with reference to examples in at least two works by Bennett. Nov 26, 2012 - The paintings of Gordon Bennett are loaded with graphic detail. 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). Research other artists who use appropriation and select an artist whose work interests you. The incorporation of Blue Poles calls to mind an era of great reform in Australian politics. EUR 99,99. dresden-de (52.329) 100%. 4 While artists often have limited control over how their work is exhibited after it has been sold, Bennett also refused to exhibit his work in Aboriginal art exhibitions, preferring: to be conceived as a contemporary artist who just happens to be indigenous and whose work encompasses an investigation of aboriginality and the construction of identity within a broad range of complex and interconnected issues. She was one of the first Australian artists to recognise the spiritual significance of Aboriginal art and the land. Their confidence was rewarded when Possession Island 1991, a triptych in which each panel measured 162 x 130 cm, sold for $384,000. The juxtaposition and sequencing of words and images in Untitled is unsettling. Ft. 2707 Coral Shores Dr, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306. This image also translates to mean: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Brushing aside the tempting opportunity to ridicule many frames of reference in that sentence (I mean, don't get me . 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. Image: Gordon Bennett, Australia 1955-2014, Possession Island, 1991. 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. The viewer does not confront the artist, but self. Place each photograph on a separate layer, overlap and morph or merge all the portraits into one image. Bennett adopted this alter ego to liberate himself from the preconceptions that were often associated with his Aboriginal heritage and his identity and reputation as the artist Gordon Bennett. While self- portraits usually address issues of personal identity, Bennett uses this form of representation to also look at issues of identity on a national scale. The facial features reflected in the mirror are blurred and distorted by roughly painted words typical racist remarks about Aboriginal people. This pastiche of style and image is like a D J (Disc Jockey) sampling and remixing different styles of music to create new expressions. To the right of the canvas, Jackson Pollocks Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952 is clearly referenced. Gordon Bennett, Possession Island (1991)*. Layers of images superimposed with words. In The coming of the light, 1987 the high- rise buildings that frame the white faces are represented as grid-like forms. SOLD FEB 10, 2023. It recalls the way stereotypes, labels, identities and systems of thought are fixed. The critical and aesthetic strategies of postmodernism have had significant impact on the development of his art practice. She was once thought to be the last surviving Tasmanian Aborigine. Using a painting technique, create a finished artwork based on one or some of these experiments. Once again, the arena of self- portraiture becomes a vehicle to take over and challenge stereotypes. Comparisons between Basquiat and Bennett often focus on the artists similar backgrounds and experiences. 2 February 2021. Gordon Bennett 1. Find out more about binary opposites and identify some binary opposites that you believe have had a significant influence on your understanding of the world. 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'. Further reading Discuss with reference to the same works. 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. Kelly Gellatly 1. He depicts how pain transcends place and event to encompass a global consciousness. 2. 'Bloodlines' The grand Romantic landscapes of Western art were intended to inspire the viewer with their dramatic beauty and effects of illusion. List some of your own qualities and attributes. Egyptian painting or relief sculpture, Chinese scroll paintings, Aboriginal painting of the Western Desert. I am that I am, Exodus 3:14 is God naming self. But this approach is central to the way many people describe and analyse his work. The first panel of Bennetts triptych, Requiem, depicts Trugannini (c. 1812 1876), a Palawa woman from Tasmania. This purchase was indicative of a massive legislative reform program that had not been seen in Australian society for decades. How do these systems/conventions reflect values and ideas important to that culture? Gordon Bennett arrived on Christmas Island in 1979 to take a post as leader of the Union of Christmas Island Workers. Possession Island 1992. His work also includes performance art, video, photography and printmaking. 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 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. 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. At the same time his work demonstrates great conceptual unity and interconnectedness. For Mondrian the grid became the essence of all forms. Fundamentally, he deconstructed history to question the truth of the past. Appropriation art is an established postmodernist strategy defined as: The direct duplication, copying or incorporation of an image (painting, photography, etc) by another artist who represents it in a different context, thus completely altering its meaning and questioning notions of originality and authenticity.1. Research references to existing images in Gordon Bennetts The nine richochets (Fall down black fella, jump up white fella) 1990. Mondrian, a Dutch De Stijl artist and a Theosophist, used art to search empirical truths and their source. He painted his most famous work, Guernica (1937), in response to the Spanish Civil War; the totemic grisaille canvas remains a definitive work of anti-war art. Bennett compels the viewer to engage with and question the values and ideas of the artists he appropriated. 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. Captain James Cook arrived there in 1770 and claimed ownership of the entire eastern coast of Australia in the name of King George III. The images include historical footage of Indigenous people and details of some of Bennetts own paintings. marking the first car ever to touch the island's soil. Watch. Here he exposes the truth of colonial occupation it was a bloody conquest. [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. That was to be the extent of my formal education on Aborigines and Aboriginal culture until Art College. 40 41. In the first painting by Bennett, Possession Island 1991 (Museum of Sydney on the site of first Government House, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales), the only figure painted in full vibrant colour is an isolated Aboriginal servant holding a drinks tray. The Estate of Gordon Bennett. Today a monument exists on the site commemorating his arrival. They communicated important Christian stories to the congregation. 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. One of the most heroic and well-known images of Australias past is Captain Cook landing in Botany Bay in 1770. The grotesque also interested Bennett as a means of disrupting conventional ways of seeing and understanding. Fri. 10-9, Sat. . As the foundation of a system of representation, perspective produces an illusion of depth on an essentially flat two dimensional surface by the use of invisible lines that converge to a vanishing point. The mirror, a recurring symbol within his work, is not a two- dimensional illusion but a literal construct. Like many others at that time, Bennett was inspired by the work of the historian Henry Reynolds. 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. Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, pp. 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. A gush of blood red paint shoots into the sky from his body. His identity must remain fluid. In the context of the other panels, which are all figurative, this black square could be seen as an absence, and possibly a representation of the oppression of indigenous voices by history. If God cannot be contained, can humanity be contained by stereotypes and labels? These include the tall ship and the appropriated logos featuring kitsch and racist references to Indigenous people, and the ominous juxtaposition of bags of flour and bottles of poison. Bennett attempts to destroy the stereotypes to question notions of identity. During 199495 at summer school Bennett learnt to make digital videos on an Apple PowerMac computer. 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. Bennetts art practice was interdisciplinary and encompasses painting, photography, printmaking, video, performance and installation. Explore a range of ideas and media within your work. Gordon Bennett, Possession Island (Abstraction), 1991. John Citizen was an abstraction of the Australian Mr Average, the Australian everyman. 2,038 Sq. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007 Gordon Bennett 1. You have to understand my position of having no designs or images or stories on which to draw to assert my Aboriginality. Include reference to specific examples in your discussion. In images such as these, Aboriginal people are often absent or relegated to the background. 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. One of the longterm goals for my work is to have my paintings returned to the pages of text books from which many of the images in them originated, where they may act as sites around which a more enlightened kind of knowledge may circulate; perhaps a knowledge that is understood from the outset as culturally relative Gordon Bennett 4. At the time the A$ 1.3 million purchase price was the highest ever paid for a piece of modern art within Australia and the U.S. This was soon replaced by a cooler, more conceptual approach. For example, the association between the colour red and blood or violence is strongly influenced by the many representations and descriptions we are exposed to in Western culture, in which blood or violence is described/represented using the colour red. One reason is that I felt I had gone as far as I could with the postcolonial project I was working through. He holds a large whip with which he regularly lashes out at a black, coffin- like box. Bennett layered these two distinctly different artists with his own work work previously appropriated from yet another context. The central figure is based on a monoprint made from the artists body. On closer inspection we see it is an image of an Aboriginal man. 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. Gewerblich. In Possession Island, 1991, Bennett meticulously photocopies and enlarges Calverts image so that it can be projected, cropped and copied onto the canvas. Bennett only used two colours, symbolically, red and black. Read through the profiles and market analysis for the top 200 Indigenous artists In Bennetts painting the bedroom becomes the site of violent conflict that involves complex and intersecting personal and cultural histories. cat. These racist terms confront an Aboriginal figure represented as a jack-in-the-box, as he is violently jerked from the box that contains him. Do these qualities reflect the reality of what it means to be Australian (ie. Gordon Bennett's painting Possession Island (Abstraction) 1991 is based on an image of Captain Cook claiming the eastern coast of Australia in 1770. My intention is in keeping with the integrity of my work in which appropriation and citation, sampling and remixing are an integral part, as are attempts to communicate a basic underlying humanity to the perception of blackness in its philosophical and historical production within western cultural contexts. scale, format), Ian McLean Gordon Bennetts existentialism in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, Roseville East, 1996, p. 69, Ian McLean Gordon Bennetts existentialism, p. 71. Gordon Bennett Number Nine, 2008 Acrylic paint on linen 71 9/10 119 7/10 in | 182.5 304 cm Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) The Rocks Get notifications for similar works Create Alert Want to sell a work by this artist? But, in the late 1990s, some residents . $927,000 Last Sold Price. 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.
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