Within the Home dcor series Gordon Bennett escalates the sampling and quoting of other artists and works to develop a pastiche. These joint acquisitions by MCA and Tate include two large video installations, one by Susan Norrie (Transit 2011) and another by Vernon Ah Kee (tall man 2010), two paintings by Gordon Bennett (Possession Island (Abstraction) 1991 and Number Nine 2008) and an artist book by Judy Watson consisting of sixteen etchings with chine coll (a . EUR 99,99. dresden-de (52.329) 100%. He gave several sponsorships in these fields, notably the Isle of Man Bennett Trophy races of 1900 to 1905 (subsequently a trials course on the island was named after him). In contrast to earlier artworks, where titles often provided a starting point for exploring ideas or issues, Bennetts abstractions are titled with numbers that relate to the order in which they were made. This includes a focus on the role and power of language, including visual representations, in shaping identity, culture and history. At the heart of all human life is a concept of self. Pollock was influenced by Navaho sand paintings, which were created on the ground. 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. This emphasises the works formal qualities and discourages any narrative or symbolic reading of it. Bennett employs this system using diagrams often labelled with acronyms, such as CVP (central vanishing point), that refer to key features of the system. 35, 36. Much of Bennetts work has been concerned with an interrogation of Australias 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. Many Indigenous Australians saw this appropriation as further evidence of a justification of colonisation and a Eurocentric interpretation of Aboriginal culture. . Born in 1955 in Monto, Queensland, Gordon Bennett lived and worked in Brisbane before his unexpected death in 2014. Bennett was aware of the role binary opposites, such as self/other, play in constructing personal and cultural identity. After working in various trades in his early life, Bennett enrolled as a matureage student at Queensland College of Art in 1986 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) degree in 1988. Gordon Bennett rapidly established himself in the Australian art world. Create an illustrated and annotated timeline of the history of Australia since settlement. He depicts how pain transcends place and event to encompass a global consciousness. The figure is dressed in tattered western clothing. 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. Based on your understanding of Bennetts motivations for the abstract paintings, outlined in the quote in the text, suggest what may have interested Bennett about the work of these artists. Gordon Bennett 1. 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. "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. 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. What key themes and ideas are explored in the book/film? However Bennetts illusionistic representation of the rugged terrain and billowing clouds reflect a style of painting traditionally associated with European Romantic art. This canvas is loosely divided into three parts. . These binary opposites insider/outsider, black/white, primitive/civilised have had a powerful influence on perceptions of European and Indigenous people and culture. Gordon Bennett (9 October 1955 - 3 June 2014) [1] was an Australian artist of Aboriginal and Anglo-Celtic descent. 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. 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. These geometric forms also refer to the early 20th-century abstract artist Kazimir Malevich. He used weapons or gum tree branches as props, to construct an image that reflected European ideas of Aboriginal types. In images such as these, Aboriginal people are often absent or relegated to the background. Bennett has included the framed photograph in the panel, to the right of the painted figure. 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 impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people and culture from this point was devastating. Nearby Recently Sold Homes. However these ideas and values simultaneously oppressed Indigenous people and their cultural and knowledge systems. After 2003 he moved away from figurative language to work in an abstract idiom (see Number Nine 2008, Tate T15515). Bennett attempts to destroy the stereotypes to question notions of identity. Such images have defined the nations settlement history for many generations of Australians. Queensland-born, Bennett (1955-2014) was deeply engaged with questions of identity, perception and the construction of history, and made a profound and ongoing contribution to contemporary art in Australia and internationally. Bennett used perspective diagrams and visual symbols in Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire . On each corner of the grid are the letters A B C D . Include in your discussion reference to Bennetts appropriation of The nine shots 1985 by Imants Tillers. Bennetts earliest works, including The coming of the light, 1987, reflect a raw and expressive style. Mondrian aspired to create a form of pure abstract art based on the grid and a controlled use of art elements, including primary colours. Theyre 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. 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. Like words, visual images, forms and elements are powerful signifiers of meaning. During 199495 at summer school Bennett learnt to make digital videos on an Apple PowerMac computer. Gordon Bennett, born on 16 April 1887 at Balwyn, Melbourne, was Australia's most controversial Second World War commander. Bennett purposefully constructed these layers to blur fixed ideas and raise questions about the way identity is constructed. But in Bennetts painting disparate diagrams, symbols and images disrupt the illusion, presenting the landscape as a site where many ideas and viewpoints compete. 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. Western art has a long tradition of creating an illusion of three- dimensional space on a flat surface. Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, p. 27, Identities come from somewhere, have histories, and like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007. Using a painting technique, create a finished artwork based on one or some of these experiments. Why do artists such as Gordon Bennett and Tracey Moffatt (b.1960) systematically decline to participate in exhibitions of Aboriginal art? Image credit: Gordon Bennett - Possession Island (1991). It demonstrates Bennetts understanding of the power of this image. Include a selection of relevant artworks by Gordon Bennett to illustrate your timeline. The background colours and features of the landscape in each panel of Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire suggest a vast Australian desert . On closer inspection we see it is an image of an Aboriginal man. The juxtaposition and sequencing of words and images in Untitled is unsettling. Possession Island (Appendix 1) 1991 and Notes to Basquiat (Jackson Pollock and his Other) (Appendix 2) 2001 will be discussed in relation to Henri's statement. 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. What systems and/or conventions are used by each culture to represent three dimensional space? They became a potent symbol of the celebrations. Theosophy means god wisdom, the belief that everything living or dead was put together from basic blocks that lead towards consciousness. To the right of the canvas, Jackson Pollocks Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952 is clearly referenced. Bennett lodges this image in layers of dots and slashes of red and yellow paint that refer to other artists and images. Gordon Bennett arrived on Christmas Island in 1979 to take a post as leader of the Union of Christmas Island Workers. 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. The installation is filled with images of his family and Constructivist-style drawings made by the artist. In a conceptual sense I was liberated from the binary prison of self and other; the wall had disintegrated but where was I? List some of your own qualities and attributes. 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. 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. Identity is fixed and self is understood in the context of words such as Abo, Boong, Coon and Darkie . 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. Bennetts interest in adopting a strategy of intervention and disturbance in the field of representation manifests in many different ways in his art. 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 titles of Bennetts artworks reflect the artists awareness of the power of words/language to suggest meaning. These images are fused and overlapped in a dynamic composition underpinned by Mondrian-style grids. He carefully staged each image in his studio, posing the sitter against a painted backdrop. Dates/events to consider and research include the 1967 Australian Referendum, the 1992 Mabo and 1996 Wik Native Title court cases, Paul Keatings 1992 Redfern address. His sudden death came just one week after the opening of the 8th Berlin Biennale, where a series of Bennett's never-before exhibited drawings from the early 1990s are currently on view. McCahon uses I AM to question notions of faith. That was to be the extent of my formal education on Aborigines and Aboriginal culture until Art College. Discuss with reference to a selection of at least three works, clearly identifying stylistic shifts, and evidence of conceptual unity. Van Goghs original bedroom evokes a feeling of peace and harmony. Gordon Bennett (1955- 2014) was born in Monto, Queensland. While Bennetts art is grounded in his personal struggle for identity as an Australian of Aboriginal and AngloCeltic descent, it presents and examines a broad range of philosophical questions related to the construction of identity, perception and knowledge. As an Australian of both Aboriginal and Anglo Celtic descent, Bennett felt he had no access to his indigenous heritage. Strange to think of Gordon Bennett as an almost classical figure in contemporary Australian art. Queensland-born Gordon Bennett was an artist who loved collapsing 'high' and 'low' art boundaries. Gordon Bennett 3, Bennett married in 1977. 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. 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. How does this work compare with conventional self-portraits? The images include historical footage of Indigenous people and details of some of Bennetts own paintings. Possession Island is a small island off the coast of northern Queensland, near the tip of Cape York, the most northerly point of mainland Australia. 22-24, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, in The Art of Gordon Bennett, p. 32, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, pp. Bennetts 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. What values or ideas characterise the postKeating era in Australia? Why? They absorb the flow of blood and recall the symbols often used in Aboriginal dot painting of the Western Desert to represent significant sites. His identity must remain fluid. ). John Citizen was an abstraction of the Australian Mr Average, the Australian everyman. The word DISPERSE was used by the colonisers to represent the killing of Aboriginal people. Conversation Bill Wright talks to Gordon Bennett, in Kelly Gellatly with contributions by Bill Wright, Justin Clemens and Jane Devery, Ian McLean, Who is John Citizen? Greenaway Art Gallery, 2006, Kelly Gellatly Citizen in the making, in Kelly Gellatly, p. 24. Blood is a potent symbol and has historically been a measure of Aboriginality. In her lifetime, Trugannini witnessed the systematic and often violent destruction of her culture and people. 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. Create an artwork in a medium of your choice that highlights how the meanings, values and ideas associated with these binary opposites influence perception and understanding. Bennetts use of the grid in these and other artworks suggests questions and ideas. 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. Bennett used Blue Poles to recall this period of change. Gordon Bennett 6, 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. Gordon Bennett 1. In the past Quadroon, was a socially acceptable term used to label Indigenous people as a way of establishing genetic heredity. 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. 3 Beds. Gordon Bennett 1. January 26, 1988: Spectator craft surround tall ship The Bounty on Sydney Harbour as it heads towards Farm Cove while a formation of air force jets are in a fly-past overhead, part of the First Fleet re-enactment for Australias Bicentennial, A strategy of intervention and disturbance, Layering and re-defining Creating new language, Re-mixing and exchanging A global perspective, Outsider and Altered body print (Shadow figure howling at the moon), Installation of Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire, 1989, in exhibition Gordon Bennett (2007), Visual images, forms and elements as signifiers, Art practice a multidisciplinary approach, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, International Audience Engagement Network (IAE), Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House, 1996, p. 20, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, p. 15, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, p. 21, These experiences are clearly reflected in the Home sweet home series 1993-4, Gordon Bennett, The manifest toe, p. 27, Kelly Gellatly, Conversation: Bill Wright talks to Gordon Bennett with contributions by Bill Wright, Justin Clemens and Jane Devery, Gordon Bennett (exh.
gordon bennett possession island