Gordon Bennett (1955- 2014) was born in Monto, Queensland. After working in various trades in his early life, Bennett enrolled as a mature–age student at Queensland College of Art in 1986 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) degree in 1988. Since his first major solo exhibition in 1989 his work has been at the forefront of contemporary Australian art and has been recognised internationally for its innovative and critical engagement with ideas and issues of ongoing relevance to contemporary culture.

While Bennett’s art is grounded in his personal struggle for identity as an Australian of Aboriginal and Anglo–Celtic descent, it presents and examines a broad range of philosophical questions related to the construction of identity, perception and knowledge. This includes a focus on the role and power of language, including visual representations, in shaping identity, culture and history.

Much of Bennett’s work has been concerned with an interrogation of Australia’s 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. However, Bennett’s 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. 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 Bennett’s global perspective.

Bennett’s art practice was interdisciplinary and encompasses painting, photography, printmaking, video, performance and installation. The critical and aesthetic strategies of postmodernism have had significant impact on the development of his art practice.  His work is layered and complex and often incorporates images, styles or references drawn from sources such as social history text books, western art history and Indigenous art. Well-known Australian and international artists whose works are referenced in different ways in Bennett’s work include Hans Heysen, Margaret Preston, Imants Tillers, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Colin McCahon and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Bennett’s 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.

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’. 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.

From 2003 Bennett worked on a series of non-representational abstract paintings that mark another significant shift in his practice. These paintings reflect Bennett’s 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. The emphasis on making ‘art about art’ which was the focus of his non-representational abstract paintings, contrasts clearly with the focus on social critique that was integral to Bennett’s earlier work, and was intended also to make people aware that I am an artist first and not a professional ‘Aborigine’.² In this respect, Bennett’s non representational abstract works, despite their overt emphasis on visual concerns, may be seen as reflecting his engagement with questions of identity, knowledge and perception.

References

¹ Bill Wright’s 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

² ibid

During his childhood in the 1950s and 60s, Bennett lived with his family in Victoria and Queensland. He described his upbringing as overwhelmingly Euro-Australian, with never a word spoken about my Aboriginal heritage. Gordon Bennett ¹

Bennett’s Aboriginal heritage came through his mother. An orphan from a very young age, she was raised on Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission in Queensland, and later trained as a domestic at Singleton. This was common practice among young Aboriginal girls and women. Eventually Bennett’s mother ‘earned’ an official exemption that allowed her to leave the Mission. 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. For example, at the time Gordon was born she still had to carry her official exemption certificate with her, and she lived in fear of her son being taken from her . ²

I can’t remember exactly when it dawned on me that I had an Aboriginal heritage, I generally say it was around age eleven, but this was my age when my family returned to Queensland where Aboriginal people were far more visible. I was certainly aware of it by the time I was sixteen years old after having been in the workforce for twelve months. It was upon entering the workforce that I really learnt how low the general opinion of Aboriginal people was. As a shy and inarticulate teenager my response to these derogatory opinions was silence, self-loathing and denial of my heritage. Gordon Bennett ³

Bennett married in 1977. He and his partner bought a house and settled in the suburbs of Brisbane like other young couples. 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. ⁴

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. Our experiences in this society manifest themselves in neuroses, demoralization, anger, and in art. ⁵

Bennett’s art explores and reflects his personal experiences. Among these was the harrowing struggle for identity that ensued from the repression and denial of his Aboriginal heritage. He acknowledged that much of his work was autobiographical, but he emphasises that there was conceptual distance involved in his art making .

… my work was largely about ideas rather than emotional content emanating from some stereotype of a ‘tortured’ soul. Gordon Bennett ⁶

References

1. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’ in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, p. 20
2. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, p. 15
3. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, p. 21
4. These experiences are clearly reflected in the Home sweet home series 1993-4
5. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, p. 27
6. Kelly Gellatly, ‘Conversation: Bill Wright talks to Gordon Bennett’ with contributions by Bill Wright, Justin Clemens and Jane Devery, Gordon Bennett (exh. cat.), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2007, p. 97

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. I did drawings of tools and weapons in my project book, just like all the other children, and like them I also wrote in my books that each Aboriginal family had their own hut, that men hunt kangaroos, possums and emus; that women collect seeds, eggs, fruit and yams. 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. That was to be the extent of my formal education on Aborigines and Aboriginal culture until Art College. Gordon Bennett ¹

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. Narratives of exploration, colonisation and settlement failed to recognise the sovereign rights (or sovereignty) of Australia’s Indigenous people.

Like many of his own and earlier generations, Bennett’s understanding of the nation’s history was partly shaped by the sort of images commonly found in history books. Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay 1770 by E. Phillips Fox, for example, depicts Captain James Cook ceremoniously coming ashore at Botany Bay to claim the land for Britain. In images such as these, Aboriginal people are often absent or relegated to the background. 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.

Bennett’s final year at art college in 1988 coincided with the Bicentenary of European settlement of Australia. Celebrations continued throughout the year and gave renewed focus to traditional images and stories of the nation’s settlement history. A fleet of tall ships sailed around Australia as part of the commemoration of settlement. They became a potent symbol of the celebrations.

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 Bicentenary celebrations triggered increased activism, protests and public debate related to Indigenous issues. For example, Aboriginal deaths in custody was recognised as a significant issue.

Like many others at that time, Bennett was inspired by the work of the historian Henry Reynolds. Reynolds wrote books and articles about the history of Australian settlement as a story of invasion and genocide. This contemporary questioning and revision of the traditional, narrow euro-centric view of history reflects a postcolonial perspective.

References

1. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, pp. 20-21

The coming of the light

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. In the Christian tradition light is associated with goodness and righteousness while darkness is associated with evil. The coming of the light suggests questions about the impact of Christianity on Indigenous cultures and people. These questions include how traditional characterisations of light and darkness have influenced perceptions and experience of race and culture.

The mirror at the bottom left-hand corner of the painting represents Bennett’s own shaving mirror. The facial features reflected in the mirror are blurred and distorted by roughly painted words – typical racist remarks about Aboriginal people. 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.

The coming of the light also explores ideas, issues and questions related to the Enlightenment values central to colonialism. The arms that extend in opposite directions across the two panels of the painting represent different perspectives on the impact of the Enlightenment. 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. However the hand in the opposite panel controls and threatens the Aboriginal figure represented as a jack- in- the- box. The jack- in- the box is surrounded by symbols, including the grid- like buildings and alphabet blocks, of the knowledge, systems and structures that represent an ‘enlightened’, civilised society.

The focus on reason, scientific learning and progress that characterised the Enlightenment (suggested by the measuring marks on the torch) lead to many significant discoveries and new ways of understanding the world. However these ideas and values simultaneously oppressed Indigenous people and their cultural and knowledge systems.

Untitled

In Untitled, 1989 Bennett works with a selection of images associated with the familiar story of the ‘discovery’ and ‘settlement’ of Australia. 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. Such images have defined the nation’s settlement history for many generations of Australians.

Bennett presents each image with a single word, written in capitals, that boldly asserts a new meaning for them. For example, placing the word DISPLACE under the image of Captain Cook coming ashore at Botany Bay focuses attention on the dispossession of Aboriginal people rather than on the ‘discovery’ of Australia. The word DISPERSE was used by the colonisers to represent the killing of Aboriginal people. The strategy of word association subverts the values and meaning traditionally associated with the image.

The final panel in the sequence of six images in Untitled is a black square. 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. However Bennett’s 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). In Malevich’s work the black square is seen as having a strong and even spiritual presence. 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.

The juxtaposition and sequencing of words and images in Untitled is unsettling. New perspectives on familiar images and stories are presented. 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.

References
Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, p. 27

Identities come from somewhere, have histories, and like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Gordon Bennett 1

At the heart of all human life is a concept of self. 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. Gordon Bennett uses self- portraits to question stereotypes and labelling. 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. Immersed within a ‘White’ European culture, he was unaware of his Aboriginality until his early teens. He described this knowledge as a ‘psychic rupturing’. 2 All that he had understood about himself and taken for granted as an Australian had ruptured.

… all the education and socialization upon which my identity and self worth as a person, indeed my sense of ‘Australianness’, and that of my peers, had as its foundation the narratives of colonialism. I had never thought to question those narratives and I certainly had never been taught at school to question them… only to believe them. 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. Gordon Bennett 3

References

1. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’ in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, p. 33
2. Ian McLean, ‘Towards an Australian postcolonial art’ in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, p. 99
3. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe ’ in The Art of Gordon Bennett, p. 22

Gordon Bennett’s art challenges us to question the stereotypes and racist labelling of Aboriginal Australians found in some history books written for and by Europeans. Bennett’s art is not always easy to look at. It confronts the bigotry and discrimination suffered by Aborigines, using a rich visual language based in both Aboriginal and Western traditions.

Self portrait (But I always wanted to be one of the good guys), 1990 questions how stereotypes create a sense of identity. Bennett investigates the way stereotypes are constructed by exploring words and images in opposites. The powerful image/word ‘I AM’, while central, is accompanied by statements of opposite, ‘I am light – I am dark’. Bennett’s portrait of himself as a four- year old boy dressed as a cowboy as the ‘I’ is juxtaposed with images of Aborigines as the ‘AM’. Clear visual divisions are created with distinct black areas as well as large white areas. The title of the work itself is unsettling. It exposes the pain these stereotypes create. Bennett attempts to destroy the stereotypes to question notions of identity. His use of ‘I AM’ emphasises this. It acts as a question with many possibilities and answers. European history has stipulated that being Australian has required anyone that does not fit into such a ‘Eurocentric’ category is different, other and therefore unworthy.

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. Layers of images superimposed with words. ‘I AM’ is borrowed from a well known art work, Victory over death 2, 1970 by New Zealand artist Colin McCahon (1919–1987) . It is also a direct reference to biblical stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. This rich interplay of words and images raises many questions. The simplicity of ‘I AM’ suggests a universality of thought. It is open to self revelation, self redemption and a myriad of rich images of self that can be built upon. McCahon uses ‘I AM’ to question notions of faith. Bennett used it to question notions of self. ‘I am that I am’, Exodus 3:14 is God naming self. It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name. If God cannot be contained, can humanity be contained by stereotypes and labels?

Bennett as a ‘cultural outsider’ of both his Aboriginal and Anglo–Celtic heritage does not assume a simplistic interpretation of identity. His art attempts to depict the complexity of both cultural perspectives. Self portrait (Ancestor figures), 1992 deals with broader issues of cultural identity as well as personal identity. The installation is filled with images of his family and Constructivist-style drawings made by the artist. Black angels replace traditional white cherubs. As a self- portrait, the artist seems to be present everywhere within the installation but is in fact nowhere. The dresser draw labelled ‘self’ is closed while the drawers for ‘history’ and ‘culture’ are ajar. Bennett indicates the need to be reconciled within the context of culture and history to develop a full sense of identity. An understanding of self in the context of family is not enough.

The mirror, a recurring symbol within his work, is not a two- dimensional illusion but a literal construct. The viewer does not confront the artist, but self. Bennett used this symbol because:

What emerges for all who take part in this piece is in fact an examination of the self. The ‘I am’ from Self portrait (But I always wanted to be one of the good guys) is replaced with ‘We all are’.

The inclusion of the grid as the foundation of the installation appears to confirm this. The grid and perspective lines are another recurring symbol in Bennett’s work. In European tradition these are seen as a means of mapping and defining space. It alludes to ownership and territory. It recalls the way stereotypes, labels, identities and systems of thought are fixed. On each corner of the grid are the letters A B C D . While these may indicate the way maps are constructed to find different locations, they also represent the first letter of racial slurs. Identity is fixed and self is understood in the context of words such as Abo, Boong, Coon and Darkie . The ‘Other’ is clearly marked out as not only different but by necessity inferior.

These contrasting and complex meanings and ideas are not accidental. Bennett purposefully constructed these layers to blur fixed ideas and raise questions about the way identity is constructed. He used his self as the vehicle to do so.

You have to understand my position of having no designs or images or stories on which to draw to assert my Aboriginality. In just three generations, that heritage has been lost to me. Gordon Bennett ¹

Blood is a potent symbol and has historically been a measure of Aboriginality. In the past ‘Quadroon’, was a socially acceptable term used to label Indigenous people as a way of establishing genetic heredity. The ‘purer’ the bloodlines, the more Aboriginal you were. Mixing of pure ‘blood’ with European ‘blood’ was feared by Europeans, ‘authenticity’ was at risk and identity diluted. As an Australian of both Aboriginal and Anglo Celtic descent, Bennett felt he had no access to his indigenous heritage. He states:

The traditionalist studies of Anthropology and Ethnography have thus tended to reinforce popular romantic beliefs of an ‘authentic’ Aboriginality associated with the ‘Dreaming’ and images of ‘primitive’ desert people, thereby supporting the popular judgment that only remote ‘full–bloods’ are real Aborigines. Gordon Bennett ²

Gordon Bennett explores these ideas in Self portrait: Interior/ Exterior , 1992. Once again, the arena of self- portraiture becomes a vehicle to take over and challenge stereotypes. Here he exposes the truth of colonial occupation – it was a ‘bloody’ conquest. Bennett depicts self as a black empty vessel, coffin- like with lash markings almost disguised by a thick layer of black paint. Literally opening up this black skin of paint are the words ‘cut me’. They act as deep welts created when tissue scars. Gouged into the skin like a tattoo, these markings will never heal or fade away. They powerfully describe pain and violence. Bennett only used two colours, symbolically, red and black.

References

1. Zara Stanhope, ‘How do you think it feels?’ in Three Colours , Gordon Bennett & Peter Robinson (exh. cat.), Heide Museum of Modern Art , Melbourne, 2004 pp. 22-24
2. Gordon Bennett, ’The manifest toe’, in The Art of Gordon Bennett, p. 32

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. In a conceptual sense I was liberated from the binary prison of self and other; the wall had disintegrated but where was I? 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. There was still no space for me to simply ‘be’.  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. Gordon Bennett ¹

Bennett’s interest in adopting a strategy of intervention and disturbance in the field of representation manifests in many different ways in his art. From early in his career he was inspired by theories and ideas associated with postmodernism. 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 nation’s history and culture.

The ‘grotesque’ also interested Bennett as a means of disrupting conventional ways of seeing and understanding. The grotesque in art is generally associated with bizarre, ugly or disturbing imagery. Such imagery has often been used by artists to unsettle the viewer and present new perspectives on familiar subjects. The Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746-1828) used the power of the grotesque in the Disasters of war series, which depicts some of the atrocities that took place in Spain during the War of Independence (1814-18). The graphic detail in these images, including mutilated, tortured bodies, continue to confront viewers today with the realities of human behaviour and suffering in war.

Bennett’s use of the grotesque is evident in Outsider, 1988, which makes reference to two paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890) – Vincent’s bedroom in Arles 1888, and Starry night 1889. Outsider depicts

…a decapitated Aboriginal figure standing over Vincent van Gogh’s bed, with red paint streaming skywards to join with the vortex of Vincent’s starry night. Gordon Bennett ²

In Outsider the energy and intensity associated with van Gogh’s expressive brushstrokes and brilliant colour contrasts are powerfully explosive . Van Gogh’s original bedroom evokes a feeling of peace and harmony. In Bennett’s painting the bedroom becomes the site of violent conflict that involves complex and intersecting personal and cultural histories. The headless figure of the Aboriginal man has an animated, spectre- like presence that haunts the scene. A gush of blood red paint shoots into the sky from his body. Bloody handprints are stamped across the walls. This imagery alludes to the violent suppression of Indigenous people and culture in the nation’s history that was thrown into focus by the Bicentenary celebrations. The circular forms in the sky are inspired by the brilliant bursts of light in van Gogh’s Starry night. They absorb the flow of ‘blood’ and recall the symbols often used in Aboriginal ‘dot painting’ of the Western Desert to represent significant sites. The pale, marble- like sculpted heads on the bed remind us of the Classical art and learning that has been privileged in Western culture above other forms of art and learning, including those associated with Indigenous cultures. With eyes closed, these heads appear as blind, mute and lifeless witnesses to the surrounding conflict and struggle.

References

1. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’ in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, pp. 32–33
2. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, p. 33

Bennett was aware of the role binary opposites, such as self/other, play in constructing personal and cultural identity. This is evident in many of his works, including Outsider. The imagery in this painting focuses on binary opposites, including the Aboriginal figure and various symbols of European and Indigenous art and culture . These binary opposites – insider/outsider, black/white, primitive/civilised – have had a powerful influence on perceptions of European and Indigenous people and culture.

In Altered body print (Shadow figure howling at the moon) Bennett focuses more explicitly on binary opposites and the associations they trigger. Lists of words draw the viewer into a game of word association. The central figure is based on a monoprint made from the artist’s body. The distorted and exaggerated features of the form incorporate qualities that appear animal and human, male and female. Other aspects of the image, including the flat, stylised shapes of the head, reflect connections to both Western abstract art and Indigenous art traditions. These qualities expose some of the complications that arise from understandings built on binary opposites.

The triptych form of painting is most commonly associated with the altarpiece paintings made for Christian churches. Altarpiece paintings traditionally occupied a central position in a church. They communicated important Christian stories to the congregation. 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.

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 Christ’s feet in an act of devotion . However, the cross- like form in Bennett’s painting has an image of Bennett’s mother, kneeling before it, with a cleaning rag in her hand, recalling her early training and work as a domestic servant under the government’s ‘protection’. More broadly, it recalls the lives of many young Aboriginal women who followed a similar destiny. It is based on a newspaper photograph of Bennett’s mother and another young Aboriginal woman, dressed in crisp white uniforms, polishing the elaborate architectural fittings in a grand interior of a homestead in Singleton. Bennett has included the framed photograph in the panel, to the right of the painted figure.

This painting combines the story of Bennett’s mother, and other young Aboriginal women in the care of the government or church, with the Christian story. 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.

Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire – landscape conventions

The background colours and features of the landscape in each panel of Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire suggest a vast Australian desert . However Bennett’s illusionistic representation of the rugged terrain and billowing clouds reflect a style of painting traditionally associated with European Romantic art. The grand Romantic landscapes of Western art were intended to inspire the viewer with their dramatic beauty and effects of illusion. But in Bennett’s painting disparate diagrams, symbols and images disrupt the illusion, presenting the landscape as a site where many ideas and viewpoints compete.

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. Roundels relating to symbols that denote significant sites in Aboriginal Western Desert dot painting also appear. They are strategically and prominently placed at the centre top of each panel, each radiating an aura of light created by white dots. Against the background of the illusionistic representation of the landscape they capture our attention, alerting us to the fact that there are other ways of representing and understanding the landscape not just the European perspectives that have dominated our cultural history.

Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire – historical figures

The first panel of Bennett’s triptych, Requiem, depicts Trugannini (c. 1812 – 1876), a Palawa woman from Tasmania. In her lifetime, Trugannini witnessed the systematic and often violent destruction of her culture and people. She was once thought to be ‘the last surviving Tasmanian Aborigine’. She looms large over the landscape in Requiem, as she does in the post- contact history of the nation as a symbol of the devastating impact that colonisation had on Indigenous people and culture.

In the third panel of Bennett’s triptych, Empire, a Roman triumphal arch frames a stately figure. From a distance the figure resembles a sculpture of a heroic Classical figure. On closer inspection we see it is an image of an Aboriginal man. This image is based on a photograph by JW Lindt (1845 – 1926). Lindt created many photographic portraits of Aboriginal subjects. He carefully staged each image in his studio, posing the sitter against a painted backdrop. He used weapons or gum tree branches as props, to construct an image that reflected European ideas of Aboriginal ‘types’. 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. There is strong symbolism associated with the placement of the figure beneath the Roman triumphal arch. Traditionally these arches were built by the Romans to celebrate victory in war. Victorious soldiers triumphantly and ceremoniously paraded under such arches, sometimes accompanied by their captives.

Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire – space and perspective systems

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 vanishing point may also be understood as the point from which these lines extend outward past the picture plane to include the viewer in the pictorial space, positioned as observer of a self contained harmonious whole. Gordon Bennett ¹

The linear diagram that frames the kneeling figure of Bennett’s mother in the central panel of Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire, and the diagrams in the lower sections of the two side panels, are typical of illustrations that explain the principles of linear perspective. Western art has a long tradition of creating an illusion of three- dimensional space on a flat surface. 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.

Linear perspective is a system for organising visual information. Bennett employs this system using diagrams often labelled with acronyms, such as CVP (central vanishing point), that refer to key features of the system. Often the basic alphabet letters ABC also appear with Bennett’s perspective diagrams, highlighting the learned and culturally specific nature of the alphabet and linear perspective. 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. 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.

Reference

1.            Gordon Bennett, &‘The manifest toe’, pp. 35, 36

Bennett used perspective diagrams and visual symbols in Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire . Symbols such as these highlight his awareness and use of visual images, forms and elements as signs. Like words, visual images, forms and elements are powerful signifiers of meaning. Our understanding of the meanings associated with visual signs is linked to cultural codes, conventions and experience. 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.

There are many visual signs that recur throughout Bennett’s artworks, including:

• grids
• dots
• mirrors
• angels
• ‘explorer’ figures
• tall ships
• Captain Cook.

Each of these signs brings significant meaning to Bennett’s work and plays an important role in his investigation of issues and ideas related to identity, understanding and perception.

Sign language – grids

The grid, with its characteristic ordered mathematical structure, appears in a range of Bennett’s artworks in a variety of forms. In The coming of the light, 1987 the high- rise buildings that frame the white faces are represented as grid-like forms. 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. In the Home décorseries Bennett used gridded compositions that refer to the paintings of Dutch artistPiet Mondrian (1872 –1944). Mondrian aspired to create a form of ‘pure’ abstract art based on the grid and a controlled use of art elements, including primary colours. Bennett’s use of the grid in these and other artworks suggests questions and ideas. 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.

Sign language – dots

Dots have been an important element in many of Bennett’s paintings as a powerful signifier of Aboriginal art, for example Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire. 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. Bennett’s use of dots highlights the way Aboriginal cultural identity continues to be defined and confined by Western ideas of Aboriginality. 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.

Gordon Bennett did not describe himself as an ‘appropriation artist’. But this approach is central to the way many people describe and analyse his work. ‘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

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. He drew on and sampled from many artists and traditions to create a new language and a new way of reading these images. Perhaps a re-writing of history?

Bennett was interested in the way language and images construct identity and history, and the way this language controls and creates meaning. Appropriation was a tool that enabled him to open up and re-define stereotypes and bias. Fundamentally, he deconstructed history to question the ‘truth’ of the past.

At art college Bennett discovered how Australian identity was built on a subjective ‘writing’ of history. He found this liberating. As one of the dispossessed within this biased history, he claims that his only tool to combat this bias was the art of mimicry. He used familiar and recognisable images that are part of an Australian consciousness to explore and question the meaning of these images.

One of the most heroic and well-known images of Australia’s past is Captain Cook landing in Botany Bay in 1770. This event was re-enacted in many pageants and dramatisations during Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988, as a way of celebrating 200 years of Australian history. It is interesting to note that this same year was declared a period of mourning by Aboriginal people. The impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people and culture from this point was devastating.

It was no accident that Bennett used this event to question the way history is written and interpreted. Samuel Calvert’s engraving, Captain Cook taking possession of the Australian continent on behalf of the British Crown AD 1770, became the starting point for Bennett’s exploration. 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. 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. It demonstrates Bennett’s understanding of the power of this image.

In Possession Island, 1991, Bennett meticulously photocopies and enlarges Calvert’s image so that it can be projected, cropped and copied onto the canvas. Calvert’s image becomes one of the layers of the painting. It is reproduced in flat, bold and black line work. Bennett lodges this image in layers of dots and slashes of red and yellow paint that refer to other artists and images. These act as ‘disturbances’. They physically prevent the viewer from seeing the image clearly, but psychologically encourage the viewer to delve into the image more deeply and question:

Where did these images come from that they’re relating back to in their minds in order to stage this re- enactment? It’s like images become part of the Australian unconscious. They’re 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. Gordon Bennett ¹

The only clearly defined part of Possession Island is the black skinned male figure in the centre. Bennett establishes him as the focal point. He is not disturbed by slashes of paint, but painted carefully and outlined by the precise grid behind him. Once again the letters A B C D feature as a potent symbol and complete the grid. The figure is dressed in tattered western clothing. Amidst the chaos and confusion of dots and slashes of colour he remains imprisoned by the grid, reduced to servitude.

Reflecting the colours of the Aboriginal flag, splashes and drips of red, yellow and black paint across the surface of the painting quote the distinctive style of Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), which Bennett began to sample in 1990. Jackson Pollock is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. His status as an artist has been elevated to hero with his contribution to Action Painting. Pollock was influenced by Navaho sand paintings, which were created on the ground. 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.

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. Thousands of dots fill the canvas. The effect is that they dissolve into a mass of colour, dots and slashes of paint . The viewer is made to step back and allow the eyes to form the images. This is similar to the way a Pointillist painting can only be seen effectively from a distance to bring the image into focus. Looking at the image from different viewpoints helps us to discover different perspectives.

References

1. Gordon Bennett & Chris McAuliffe, ‘Interview with Gordon Bennett’ in Rex Bulter (Ed.) (2nd Edition), What is Appropriation? An Anthology of writings on Australian Art in the 1980s & 1990s, IMA Publishing, 2004, p. 273

2. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, pp. 40– 41

Within the Home décor series Gordon Bennett escalates the sampling and quoting of other artists and works to develop a pastiche. Home Décor (Algebra) Ocean, 1998 synthesises the work of Piet Mondrian(1872–1944), Margaret Preston (1875–1963) and later in the series, Jean–Michel Basquiat(1960–1988) among others. 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. These images are fused and overlapped in a dynamic composition underpinned by Mondrian-style grids. Every object is carefully and clearly painted, yet the images conceptually blur together as they intersect and interlace through the grid, across the canvas.

Bennett compels the viewer to engage with and question the values and ideas of the artists he appropriated. Mondrian, a Dutch De Stijl artist and a Theosophist, used art to search ‘empirical’ truths and their source. Theosophy means ‘god wisdom’, the belief that everything living or dead was put together from basic blocks that lead towards consciousness.

For Mondrian the grid became the essence of all forms. Bennett’s grid formations seem to imprison the figures within the canvas. However, he offers more than one interpretation of the grid’s use, which is indicated by the sampling of works by Australian artist Margaret Preston . Preston envisioned the creation of an ‘Australian’ aesthetic. She was one of the first Australian artists to recognise the spiritual significance of Aboriginal art and the land. She attempted to create works that reflected a sense of national identity by incorporating Aboriginal motifs and colours in her work. Some of Preston’s appropriations however, demeaned and trivialised the way Aborigines were depicted and understood. Many Indigenous Australians saw this appropriation as further evidence of a justification of colonisation and a Eurocentric interpretation of Aboriginal culture.

Bennett confronts and questions the appropriateness of this borrowing. Physically, the kitsch Aboriginal motifs copied from Preston are trapped. The representation of Aborigines has been reduced to caricature. Bennett layered these two distinctly different artists with his own work – work previously appropriated from yet another context. Mondrian cages the figures, Preston objectifies the figures; Bennett accommodates both to grasp the intangible and dissect these limited interpretations and stereotypes.

The Notes to Basquiat series takes appropriation to yet another level within Bennett’s art practice. Bennett not only used Basquiat images, but begins to paint in his style. Jean–Michel Basquiat, crowned a ‘black urban’ artist, was well known for his spontaneous and gestural paintings, which reflect the artist’s involvement in the graffiti culture of the United States. In a letter written to Basquiat after his death, Bennett writes:

To some, writing a letter to a person post humously may seem tacky and an attempt to gain some kind of attention, even ‘steal’ your ‘crown’. 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. 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. The works I have produced are ‘notes’, nothing more, to you and your work … Gordon Bennett ¹

Comparisons between Basquiat and Bennett often focus on the artists’ similar backgrounds and experiences. Both artists have an affinity with Jazz, Rap and Hip Hop music. This influence is seen in the rhythmic movement of Bennett’s Notes to Basquiat series. Underlying Bennett’s admiration for Basquiat was the need to re- contextualise the issues that he had explored throughout his career as an artist. In Notes to Basquiat (Jackson Pollock and his other) 2001, Bennett confronts these issues within a global context.

This canvas is loosely divided into three parts. The left explodes with images of 9/11, the devastatingly unforgettable attacks in the United States, including New York. These images, forever forged in our minds, are boldly depicted in Basquiat’s graffiti- like style. Basquiat’s signature ‘crown’ hovers beneath a tag-like image of fire. This image also translates to mean: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. It is uttered by all good Muslims before a good deed. 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. The persistence of language references the way language controls and defines how we understand ourselves and our world. To the right of the canvas, Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952 is clearly referenced.

This pastiche of style and image is like a D J (Disc Jockey) sampling and remixing different styles of music to create new expressions. Issues ly explored in an Australian context are now examined in an international context. Bennett used 9/11 and its global impact three months after the event as the stage for his discourse on cultural identity. He depicts how pain transcends place and event to encompass a global consciousness. How ideas might be encountered from different places and events interest him. The inclusion of Pollock helps build these cross- connections.

It was no accident that Bennett used Pollock’s Blue Poles: Number 11. The incorporation of Blue Poles calls to mind an era of great reform in Australian politics. The purchase of this artwork by the Whitlam Labor Government (1973–1975) was fraught with controversy. 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. Most Australians were shocked and scandalised that public money was spent on something they neither appreciated nor understood. This purchase was indicative of a massive legislative reform program that had not been seen in Australian society for decades. 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. Bennett used Blue Poles to recall this period of change. Pollock becomes a catalyst for transformation.

Bennett worked in a range of art forms and with a variety of media and techniques. His work also includes performance art, video, photography and printmaking.

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.

Performance with object for the expiation of guilt (Violence and grief remix) 1996, 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.

Art practice – questions of style

While the conceptual framework underpinning Bennett’s art remained remarkably consistent, his art practice was 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 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 Basquiat series, which Bennett commenced in 1998, marked a significant new direction in his art in relation to working with the style of another artist.

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 Perspect a exhibition of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In the following year he was awarded the prestigious Moët et Chandon prize 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.

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 ¹

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 ²

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 ³

Since 1992 Bennett was involved in an ongoing ‘non-performance’ by refusing to participate in public lecture programs in Australia. 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. Kelly Gellatly ⁵

References

1. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’, Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett’ Craftsman House, 1996, p. 58
2. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’ p. 58
3. Gordon Bennett, ‘The manifest toe’ p. 59
4. Jane Devery, ‘Chronology’ p. 113
5. Kelly Gellatly, ‘Citizen in the making’, p.18

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 ¹

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 ² As an alternative artistic identity, John Citizen not only alerts us to how artistic identity is constructed, it gave Bennett great freedom to be someone other than Gordon Bennett.

John Citizen was an abstraction of the Australian ‘Mr Average’, the Australian ‘everyman’. John Citizen was 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 was labelled an ‘Aboriginal Artist’ he was ‘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 was, I’m not interested in doing that. His identity must remain fluid. He was 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 was true of Australian citizens in general in our multicultural country. Gordon Bennett ³

From the beginning of his career, John Citizen had 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.

References

1. Kelly Gellatly, ‘Citizen in the making’, p. 17
2. ‘John Citizen artist profile’, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne http://www.suttongallery.com.au/artists/artistprofile.php?id=39 accessed 29/11/07
3. ‘Conversation – Bill Wright talks to Gordon Bennett’, in Kelly Gellatly with contributions by Bill Wright, Justin Clemens and Jane Devery, Gordon Bennett (exhib. cat. ), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2007, p. 101

In 2003, Bennett 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.

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 was 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 ¹

References

1. Gordon Bennett, ‘Conversation – Bill Wright talks to Gordon Bennett, p. 97