Activities
Ideas and influences – early work
1.1 Think and discuss – the personal and beyond
While personal experience has had a significant influence on Gordon Bennett’s art practice, the autobiographical aspects of his work are framed by bigger ideas and questions that have relevance and significance beyond Bennett’s own experience. Do you agree? Discuss with reference to a range of artworks by Bennett.
1.2 Interpretation and analysis – applying frameworks
Select two artworks by Gordon Bennett that interest you and discuss how the artist’s personal background, postcolonialism and/or postmodernism provide a framework for the meanings, ideas and/or formal qualities you find in the artworks.
1.3 Interpretation and analysis – comparative views
What is your personal interpretation of the meaning and ideas in The coming of the light or Untitled ?
In your discussion consider meanings and ideas associated with
- the visual qualities and symbolism of art elements such as colour and shape
- the symbolism and representation of subject matter/content (including text)
- the appropriation of the work of other artists
- the presentation of the artwork (ie. scale, format)
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. )
How does this interpretation and analysis compare to your own? Suggest reasons for the similarities and differences that you find.
What does this interpretation add to your understanding of the artwork?
1.4 Research activity – historical context and timeline
Create an illustrated and annotated timeline of the history of Australia since settlement. Include a selection of relevant artworks by Gordon Bennett to illustrate your timeline. Consider what dates/events should be included in your timeline and why. Research the significant dates/events referenced in Bennett’s artworks, including Myth of the Western Man (White man’s burden) 1992 for some ideas. Dates/events to consider and research include the 1967 Australian Referendum, the 1992 Mabo and 1996 Wik Native Title court cases, Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern address.
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. The timeline could be presented in hardcopy for display in the classroom, or as an ICT project incorporating images and audio.
1.5 Think and discuss – questions and complexities in Bennett’s work
Bennett’s pictures leave us with questions rather than answers, with complexities rather than simplicities – as if the origins of truth, identity and ideology are in metaphors and signs rather than in things, and hence are layered and relative Ian McLean 1
Discuss in relation to selected artworks by Bennett that you believe reveal questions and complexities, rather than answers and simplicities. Explain how you believe Bennett communicates and presents questions and complexities in his work.
1.6 Think and discuss – art and history
[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
What does this comment suggest to you about the purpose of Bennett’s questioning of history? Discuss with reference to one or more works by Bennett.
References