Art Practice and Industry Issues

This section explores ideas related to the role of materials, techniques and style in Gordon Bennett’s art practice. This includes a consideration of the artist’s most recent abstract paintings. It also introduces issues and ideas related to how Bennett’s work has been recognised and received. This includes the emergence of Bennett’s artistic alter-ego, John Citizen, in the mid–1990s as a response to some of these issues.

Art practice – a multidisciplinary approach

Bennett’s art practice is often described as multidisciplinary. Painting has remained consistently important in his practice over the past twenty years. But like many contemporary artists, Bennett works in a range of art forms and with a variety of media and techniques. His work also includes:

• performance art
• video
• photography
• printmaking.

An expanded practice – the influence of new technology

Gordon Bennett
born Australia 1955
Still from Performance with object for the expiation of guilt (Violence and grief remix) 1996
colour video transferred to DVD, sound, 7 min 42 sec
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of the artist, 2000
© Courtesy of the artist

During 1994–95 at summer school Bennett learnt to make digital videos on an Apple PowerMac computer. This allowed him to utilise professional capture, editing and special effects software, to expand his art practice to include video and performance work.¹

Performance with object for the expiation of guilt (Violence and grief remix) 1996, included in this exhibition, is a remix of an earlier video performance work, Performance with object for the expiation of guilt, 1995. The performance that forms an integral part of this work shows a tall indistinct figure (Bennett) prowling around a stage- like setting illuminated by a rapidly changing pattern of images, text, light and colour. He holds a large whip with which he regularly lashes out at a black, coffin- like box. The images include historical footage of Indigenous people and details of some of Bennett’s own paintings. The soundtrack includes digital sampling of ICE.T’s ‘Race War’.

The dynamic juxtaposition of images, sound and other effects made possible by video, introduced new dimensions to Bennett’s investigation of issues and ideas related to identity, history and language.

In 1995 Bennett also began the Home décor series. This series integrates elements from ‘indigenous’ designs by Margaret Preston, De Stijl-inspired modernist compositions and imagery drawn from Bennett’s earlier work. The computer and Adobe PhotoShop software, played an integral role in the development of this series.

In the ‘cut and paste’ aesthetic of the Home décor series we are also able to gauge the growing importance of the computer to Bennett during this period; a tool which enabled him to both experiment and successfully ‘build’ his compositions before physically undertaking their complex and time consuming execution. Kelly Gellatly ²

Art practice – questions of style

While the conceptual framework underpinning Bennett’s art has remained remarkably consistent, his art practice has been characterised by some dramatic stylistic shifts over twenty years.

Bennett’s earliest works, including The coming of the light, 1987, reflect a raw and expressive style. This was soon replaced by a cooler, more conceptual approach. This approach involved a flattening of the picture surface and often the use of disparate visual elements or styles borrowed or copied from different sources. These sources included social studies texts.  Bennett has continued to work in new ways with materials, techniques and images throughout his career. This approach to his work resists any classification or confinement according to style. Traditional ideas about an artist’s ‘individual’ or ‘signature style’ are further confounded in Bennett’s art practice by the his appropriation or sampling of the distinctive styles of other artists, including Jackson Pollock (1912–56), Margaret Preston ( 1875–1963) and Piet Mondrian (1872–1944). The The Notes to Basquiatseries, which Bennett commenced in 1998, marked a significant new direction in his art in relation to working with the style of another artist.

The works in this series display a sophisticated mimicry of Basquiat’s raw street style.³ This includes its expressive mark making and distinctive use of motifs and symbols such as skeletal figures, lists, crowns and aeroplanes. Bennett’s adoption of Basquiat’s style reflects the strong connection he felt to Basquiat’s subject matter and personal story. Basquiat’s style provides a new and broader context for the often distinctly Australian ideas and images that Bennett explores in his work.

Bennett has continuously shifted his style:

…not only to avoid being typecast…but also to make the point that he is, before anything else, an artist, a performer. We don’t confuse an actor with the role he plays, so too we should not confuse the artist with the persona projected in his art. In short, art is a type of disguise, mask or mirror rather than a window onto the soul, but a disguise by which the artist can be something more than himself, and a mirror that reflects back to the audience their own selves and the world they live in. Ian McLean ⁴

Art practice – interconnectedness

Gordon Bennett
born Australia 1955
Notes to Basquiat (The coming of the light) 2001
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152.0 x 152.0 cm
Collection of the artist, Brisbane
© Courtesy of the artist
Photography: John O’Brien

Gordon Bennett
born Australia 1955
The coming of the light 1987
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
(a-b) 152.0 x 374.0 cm (overall)
Collection of the artist, Brisbane
© Courtesy of the artist
Photography: Brenton McGeachie

The ability of Bennett’s oeuvre to fold back on itself while forging new ground – its interconnectedness, is just one of many characteristics that ensure the continued significance of what is at times a confronting and expansive body of work. Kelly Gellatly ⁵

The interconnectedness that characterises Bennett’s art practice is clearly evident when we compare Notes to Basquiat (The coming of the light), 2001 with the earlier 1987 painting, The coming of the light. The more recent painting includes signs – high rise buildings, outstretched arms – that were pivotal to his interrogation of colonisation and its impact on Indigenous culture in The coming of the light. Viewed through Basquiat’s distinctive style and motifs, and through the associations they suggest with Basquiat’s own story and cultural context, Bennett presents new broader perspectives on the ideas and issues explored in his early work.

Issues of recognition and reception

Bennett achieved critical success early in his career. In 1989, a year after graduating from art college, his work was included in the high profile Australian Perspectaexhibition of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In the following year he was awarded the prestigious Moët et Chandonprize with his painting The Nine Ricochets (Fall down black fella, jump up white fella), 1990.

Such accolades and critical recognition are keenly sought by many artists. 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. Bennett was acutely aware that his own success paralleled the growing contemporary interest in Indigenous art and culture. As he said in 1989:

My quick success has something to do with my Aboriginality and that worries me. Let’s face it; Aboriginal work is flavour of the month. Gordon Bennett ⁶

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.

I didn’t go to art college to graduate as an ‘Aboriginal Artist’. I did want to explore ‘Aboriginality’, however, and it is a subject of my work as much as colonialism and the narratives and language that frame it, and the language that has consistently framed me. Acutely aware of the frame, I graduated as a straight honours student of ‘fine art’ to find myself positioned and contained by the language of primitivism as an ‘Urban Aboriginal Artist’. While some people may argue this has been a quick road to success, and that my work is authorised by my ‘Aboriginality’, I maintain that I don’t have to be an Aborigine to do what I do, and that ‘quick success’ is not an inherent attribute of an Aboriginal heritage, as history has shown, nor is it that unusual for college graduates who have something relevant to say. Gordon Bennett ⁷

For an artist whose practice was concerned with how labels and systems define and confine knowledge and perception, labels and categorisations such as ‘aboriginal artist’, or ‘urban aboriginal artist’ that were often applied to his work through exhibitions, books and other commentaries presented many practical as well as philosophical issues

I am very aware of the boundaries of critical containment within the parameters of ‘Urban Aboriginal Art’, and have so far worked within these boundaries to try and broaden, extend and subvert them. The reality is, however, that I have never really had much choice; and I have been faced with my work not entering some collections on the grounds of it being not ‘Aboriginal’ enough, to being asked to sell my work through stalls at cultural festivals…Gordon Bennett ⁸

Bennett adopted several strategies to resist the narrow framework through which he as an artist and his work were viewed.

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. 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. Gordon Bennett ⁹

Since 1992 Bennett has been involved in an ongoing ‘non-performance’ by refusing to participate in public lecture programs in Australia. ¹⁰ While artists often have limited control over how their work is exhibited after it has been sold, Bennett also refuses 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. Kelly Gellatly ¹¹

John Citizen

John Citizen
born Australia 1955
Interior (Tribal rug) 2007
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152.0 x 152.0 cm
Private collection, Brisbane
© Courtesy of the artist
Photography: John O’Brien

John Citizen
born Australia 1955
Unassailable heroes (Sweet damper) Famous since Captain Cook 1996
synthetic polymer paint, pencil and watercolour
80.0 x 120.0 cm (sheet)
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Purchased with funds from the Sir Claude Hotchin Art Foundation, 1999
© Courtesy of the artist
Photography: Kenneth Plebann

By the mid 1990s, Gordon Bennett came to feel he was in an untenable position. While his work was increasingly exhibited within a national and international context, the combination of his position (or as Bennett would argue ‘label’) as an (urban) Aboriginal artist, and the subject matter of his work, seemed to ensure inclusion within certain curatorial and critical frameworks, and largely determine interpretation and reception. Kelly Gellatly ¹²

Bennett was concerned that his identity and work was seen as coming from a narrow framework. This led him to adopt an artistic alter ego, John Citizen. John Citizen had his first exhibition in 1995 at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne. He continues to exhibit and his works are part of important public and private collections. ¹³

It is no secret that John Citizen is Gordon Bennett. John Citizen is:

…transparently a type of disguise. Perhaps the main point of John Citizen is that in recognising his disguise, we must accept that ‘Gordon Bennett’ is one too. Ian McLean ¹⁴

As an alternative artistic identity, John Citizen not only alerts us to how artistic identity is constructed, it gives Bennett great freedom to be someone other than Gordon Bennett.

John Citizen is an abstraction of the Australian ‘Mr Average’, the Australian ‘everyman’. John Citizen is a work in progress that allows me to follow other streams of thought in my practice. He serves as a counterpoint to Gordon Bennett’s ‘Other’, and yet we are the one and the same. When Gordon Bennett is labelled an ‘Aboriginal Artist’ he is ‘othered’ as an Aborigine and all the preconceptions that entails. John Citizen lets me take my Australian citizenship and cultural upbringing back from the netherworld of the imagined ‘Other’. As far as pinning down who John Citizen actually is, I’m not interested in doing that. His identity must remain fluid. He is in a sense all things to all people. He can be anything the viewer wants him to be: white, black or any shade in between, as is true of Australian citizens in general in our multicultural country. Gordon Bennett ¹⁵

From the beginning of his career, John Citizen has had a complex relationship with Gordon Bennett. 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. 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. However, while apparently recognising and presenting these motifs/symbols as signifiers of meaning, Citizen does not appear to have the same interest as Bennett in interrogating the systems and values these motifs represent or the role they have played in shaping identity, history and understanding. 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.

Citizen’s more recent work includes a series of interiors inspired by the decorator and home magazines that circulate widely in popular culture. This work reflects our contemporary obsession with creating the perfect home filled with the latest ‘must have’ designer style and material items. In Interior (Tribal rug), 2007 the sleek modern design of the furniture is complemented by a Margaret Preston inspired tribal rug and an abstract painting by Gordon Bennett. The focus on ‘designer style’ in these interiors, the lack of human presence, and the flat areas of colour with simple black outline, creates a strange feeling of emptiness that sets them apart from Bennett’s art.

Recent work – abstraction

Gordon Bennett
born Australia 1955
Number nine 2004
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152.0 x 152.0 cm
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
© Courtesy of the artist
Photography: John O’Brien

While John Citizen was focused on his Interiors series, and the more recent Coloured people series inspired by the head shots of beautiful, smiling people from the social pages of weekend newspapers, Bennett was involved in an entirely different project. In 2003 he embarked on a series of non-representational abstract paintings, marking a dramatic shift in his art practice, formally and conceptually. These are paintings about painting. 

I guess the work is different for me in that I concentrate on the act of painting in itself, rather than as a means to an end. Whilst painting, I am totally consumed by the act of dragging the brush down the surface of the canvas, by the act of keeping the lines/stripes even and as straight as possible. Gordon Bennett ¹⁶

In contrast to earlier artworks, where titles often provided a starting point for exploring ideas or issues, Bennett’s abstractions are titled with numbers that relate to the order in which they were made. This emphasises the works’ formal qualities and discourages any narrative or symbolic reading of it.

The motivation behind the abstract paintings is complex but in part it reflects Bennett’s ongoing concerns about issues related to the reception of his work.

There are a number of reasons why I began painting abstract paintings that focused on ‘overt visual phenomena, as opposed to explicit visual content’. One reason is that I felt I had gone as far as I could with the postcolonial project I was working through. This culminated in the Notes to Basquiat series in 2003. The content of the work was getting to me emotionally. So, painting in an overtly ‘abstract’ manner was a way to go silent on the issues involved and yet still keep painting. It was a way forward for me.

Another reason was to make people aware that I am an artist first and not a professional ‘Aborigine’. I found people were always confusing me as a person with the content of my work.

Finally, I’ve never been one to make art about art before. There was always some sense of social engagement. I needed to change direction … at least for a while. Art about art seems appropriate for the time being. The Stripe series of abstract paintings represents a kind of freedom for me as an artist. Gordon Bennett ¹⁷

References