Gordon Bennett
born Australia 1955
Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire 1989
oil and photograph on canvas (triptych)
(a) 120.0 x 120.0 cm; (b) 200.0 x 150.0 cm; (c) 120.0 x 120.0 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased, 1989 under the Contemporary Art Acquisition Program
with funds from Hill & Taylor, Solicitors through
the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
© Courtesy of the artist
Installation of Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire, 1989, in exhibition Gordon Bennett (2007)
Gordon Bennett
born Australia 1955
Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire 1989 (detail)
oil and photograph on canvas (triptych)
(a) 120.0 x 120.0 cm; (b) 200.0 x 150.0 cm; (c) 120.0 x 120.0 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased, 1989 under the Contemporary Art Acquisition Program
with funds from Hill & Taylor, Solicitors through
the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
© Courtesy of the artist
Gordon Bennett
born Australia 1955
Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire 1989 (detail)
oil and photograph on canvas (triptych)
(a) 120.0 x 120.0 cm; (b) 200.0 x 150.0 cm; (c) 120.0 x 120.0 cm
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Purchased, 1989 under the Contemporary Art Acquisition Program
with funds from Hill & Taylor, Solicitors through
the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
© Courtesy of the artist
PAOLO Veneziano
The Crucifixion (c. 1349)
tempera and oil on wood panel
96.8 x 67.7 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1949
1966-4
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