Identity Case Study: Gordon BennettIntroduction Gordon Bennett was born in Monto, Queensland in 1955. 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 is 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 Bennett explores.

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. Since 2003 Bennett has been working 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 is 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 is 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 an ongoing engagement with questions of identity, knowledge and perception.

Personal background – Family, memory, experience During his childhood in the 1950s and 60s, Bennett lived with his family in Victoria and Queensland. He has described his upbringing as overwhelmingly Euro-Australian, with never a word spoken about my Aboriginal heritage. Gordon Bennett 1Bennett’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 has 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. Adrian Piper 5

Bennett’s art explores and reflects his personal experiences. Among these is the harrowing struggle for identity that ensued from the repression and denial of his Aboriginal heritage. He acknowledges that much of his work is autobiographical, but he emphasises that there is 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

History lessons – Colonial and postcolonial perspectivesI 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 7

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.

E. Phillips FOXLanding of Captain Cook at Botany Bay 1770 1902 oil on canvas192.2cm x 265.4cm National Gallery of Victoria, Gilbee Bequest, 1902

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 Australia’s Bicentennialgelatin silver photograph© Newspix / News Ltd, Sydney

Brenda L. Croft Gurindji/Mutpurra born 1964Elders from Northern Territory, Chalmers Street, Redfern. Long March of Freedom, Justice and Hope, Invasion Day, 26 January 1988 1988 gelatin silver photograph50.4 x 37.6 cm (image); 50.4 x 40.5 cm (sheet) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra © Brenda Croft/Licensed by VISCOPY Australia

 

Gordon Bennettborn Australia 1955Untitled 1989oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas(1-6) 30.0 x 30.0 cm (each)Museum of Contemporary Art, SydneyGift of Doug Hall 1993 (1993.281)© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: Richard Stringer

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.

Since the late 1980s postcolonial dialogues and debates have become increasingly common in Australian society and politics. They provide a useful framework for considering the ideas and issues related to Australia’s colonial history, which Bennett addresses in his art

Exploring Identity – Self-portraiture

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

 

Self-Portraits – Perceptions of self

Gordon Bennettborn Australia 1955Self portrait (But I always wanted to be one of the good guys) 1990oil on canvas150.0 x 260.0 cmPrivate collection, Brisbane© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: Phillip Andrews

Colin McCahonNew Zealander 1919–1987Victory over death 2 1970 synthetic polymer paint on unstretched canvas207.5 x 597.7 cmNational Gallery of Australia, CanberraGift of the New Zealand Government 1978© Colin McCahon Research & Publication Trust

Since his days as a student, Gordon Bennett has experimented widely within the realms of traditional self-portraiture by incorporating his own face within his work… he has always maintained a healthy scepticism of simple investigations of the self that remain divorced from the broader conditioning forces of history and culture. Thus within the examples of self- portraiture that thread through Bennett’s oeuvre, there emerges a more subtle and abstracted engagement with this genre; and one from which the artist’s likeness is entirely absent. Kelly Gellatly4

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.

They had the power to make us see and experience ourselves as ‘Other’. Gordon Bennett 5

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 uses 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?

I decided that I was in a very interesting position: my mind and body had been effectively colonized by Western culture, and yet my Aboriginality, which had been historically, socially and personally repressed, was still part of me … 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 6

Bennett determines in Self portrait (But I always wanted to be one of the good guys) that labels and stereotypes have no relevance to a healthy construction of identity.

Self-Portraits – Cultural and historical identities

Gordon Bennettborn Australia 1955Self portrait (Ancestor figures) 1992chest of drawers, watercolour, photocopies, lead, rocks, masking tape(variable) (installation)Collection of the artist, Brisbane© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: Phillip Andrews

My approach is very personal. You might even say that every work to date has been a self- portrait, in that what inspires each work is my own day- to- day experience of living in Australia. Gordon Bennett 7

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 uses this symbol because:

In the mirror everything is possible because nothing is there. Ian McLean 8

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 constructs these layers to blur fixed ideas and raise questions about the way identity is constructed. He uses his self as the vehicle to do so.

Self-Portraits – Deconstructing stereotypes

Gordon Bennett born Australia 1955Self portrait: Interior/Exterior 1992 synthetic polymer paint on canvas on pine frames, leather stock whip, paper tags(1–2) 187.0 x 60.0 x 25.0 cm (each) (1–3) (variable) (installation)Collection of the artist, Brisbane© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: Phillip Andrews

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 9

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 10

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 uses two colours, symbolically, red and black.

There is no physical body. The coffin- like box acts as the body, both inside and outside are scarred with ‘Pollock’ inspired lashes of paint. These scars are not just physical they are also emotional. This imagery is reinforced by the whip neatly hanging on the wall beside the ‘body’. Ultimately, this piece, one of a series of ‘welt’ paintings, explores identity through pain, exploitation and suffering. Bennett does not wish to romanticise or sanitise this ‘bloody’ history. The viewer is challenged to face it. The blood splashed and flowing under the layer of black skin does not discern the colour of the skin it contains, only the potency of life. Bennett challenges the viewer with contrasting identities. The oppressors, those who use the whip, and the oppressed, those enslaved by the whip. These opposites are not absolute. Bennett is more interested in exploring what lies between .

My work is often seen as about exploring my identity in order to secure it, like I’m searching for it, like I’ve lost it somewhere, which is the total opposite to what I’m doing. Sure, I’m exploring identity, but I’m trying to make it obvious about how open it is; how it’s a process of the negotiation of these different sites of memory, human relations. It is all those other things, and it shouldn’t be closed off. It shouldn’t be a thing that constricts nor should it be an imposed thing, from outside oneself, like a prison. Gordon Bennett 11

Bennett’s art practice attempts to remove the obstacles that interfere with a positive development of self

A strategy of intervention and disturbanceStrategies and signs are used by Gordon Bennett in his artwork. They are part of his investigation and interrogation of issues and ideas related to identity, history, and culture. This includes a consideration of some of the signs used to represent the values, systems and structures associated with language and visual representation, which shape our understanding and perception of identity, and history 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. 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 is manifest 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 – Outsider

Francisco Jose Goya Y Lucientes Spanish 1746–1828The disasters of war c.1810–20 (1863 published)Plate 36: Tampoco (No more)bound volume of 80 plates etching, aquatint, lans, burnisher, drypoint and burin18.0 x 25.5 cm (plate) (variable); 24.4 x 33.2 cm (sheet)25.3 x 34.5 x 3.7 cm (volume)National Gallery of Victoria, MelbourneFelton Bequest, 1966

Gordon Bennettborn Australia 1955Outsider 1988oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas290.5 x 179.5 cmThe University of Queensland, BrisbaneAcquired with the assistance of the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council, 1989© Courtesy of the artist

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

Outsider was painted one hundred years after van Gogh made his celebrated paintings. Bennett painted Outsider in his final year of art college, when Australia was in the grip of Bicentenary celebrations.

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.

Although Bennett soon moved towards what he describes as a ‘cooler’ more overtly conceptual 3 approach, he continued to use elements of the grotesque as a way of disturbing and disrupting conventional ways of seeing and understanding, as seen in his Bounty Hunter series, 1991.

More than words – the power of languagePostmodernism is about language. How it controls, how it determines meaning, and how we try to exert control through language. About how language restricts, closes down, insists that it stands for some thing. Postmodernism is about how ‘we’ are defined within that language, and within specific historical, social, cultural matrices. Ronald W. Neperud 4

As children we become socialised into a particular societal structure, a network of relationships to, and ideas about, the world that is constructed by language. Indeed language may be seen as the cement that binds and maintains the social

organisation of a particular society or cultural group. Language defines the invisible boundaries or limits to the understanding of the world of experience. It does not constitute a natural inventory of the world, but rather language is a system of conventional and arbitrary sounds and symbols that presents the culturally relative subjective human perception of it. Gordon Bennett 5

I do believe that art can function to expand one’s consciousness, to act as a catalyst perhaps, to exceed the boundaries of language and how it defines and limits our understanding of the world in which we live. Gordon Bennett 6

Engaging in ideas and theories associated with postmodernism, focused Bennett’s attention on systems and structures that shape our identity and understanding of the world. Early works such as The coming of the light reveal his awareness of the power of language to define and control perception and understanding. In this and many later works, Bennett uses the symbolism of children’s building blocks and/or the basic alphabet letters ABC to signify language and the fact that it is a learned and culturally specific system. These same basic alphabet letters also appear in many of Bennett’s artworks as the first letter of racist terms, such as ‘A bo’, ‘B oong’, ‘C oon’. Bennett often heard such terms used in relation to Aboriginal people. In using these words in his own work he exposes the power that words have to define and confine perception and understanding.

Binary opposites – Definitions and positionsIt is the collapse of the conceptual gap between the binary opposites of self/other, civilized/savage, sophisticated/primitive, or perhaps more appropriately its gradual disintegration and my process of integration that forms the substratum of my life and work. Gordon Bennett 7

According to theories associated with binary opposites our ideas about the world are informed by our understanding of pairs of opposite words, rather than by single words. For example, masculine/feminine, good/bad, light/dark . Binary opposites may seem ‘natural’ but they are influenced by cultural and social factors. The meanings that develop around binary opposites in a culture/society, and the concepts of difference they embody, can have a significant influence on perception and understanding. For example, stereotypes are often constructed and maintained in a culture because of the way difference is defined by particular binary opposites, such as girl/boy, old/young, rich/poor. We often judge or perceive one of a pair of binary opposites more positively than the other.

Binary opposites – Outsider and Altered body print (Shadow figure howling at the moon

Gordon Bennettborn Australia 1955Altered body print (Shadow figure howling at the moon) 1994synthetic polymer paint and vinyl paint on canvas and synthetic polymer paint on board(1) 182.0 x 182.0 cm; (2) 59.5 x 59.5 cm x 8.0 cmThe Paul Eliadis Collection of Contemporary Australian Art, Brisbane© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: Phillip Andrews

Bennett is 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.

Borrowed images and styles

Gordon Bennett does 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-contextualises existing images to challenge the viewer to question and see alternative perspectives. He draws on and samples 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 is interested in the way language and images construct identity and history, and the way this language controls and creates meaning. Appropriation for Bennett is a tool that enables him to open up and re-define stereotypes and bias. Fundamentally, he deconstructs history to question the ‘truth’ of the past.

Re-mixing and exchanging – A global perspectiveThe Notes to Basquiat series takes appropriation to yet another level within Bennett’s art practice. Bennett not only uses 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 9

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 is the need to re- contextualise the issues that he has 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 previously explored in an Australian context are now examined in an international context. Bennett uses 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 is no accident that Bennett uses 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 uses Blue Poles to recall this period of change. Pollock becomes a catalyst for transformation.

Art practice – a multidisciplinary approachBennett’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:

o performance art o video o photographyo printmaking.

An expanded practice – the influence of new technologyGordon Bennettborn Australia 1955Still from Performance with object for the expiation of guilt (Violence and grief remix) 1996colour video transferred to DVD, sound, 7 min 42 secNational Gallery of Victoria, MelbourneGift 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 styleWhile 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 Bennettborn Australia 1955Notes to Basquiat (The coming of the light) 2001synthetic polymer paint on canvas152.0 x 152.0 cm

Collection of the artist, Brisbane© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: John O’Brien

Gordon Bennett born Australia 1955The coming of the light 1987synthetic polymer paint on canvas

(a-b) 152.0 x 374.0 cm (overall)Collection of the artist, Brisbane© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: 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 receptionBennett 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 Citizenborn Australia 1955Interior (Tribal rug) 2007synthetic polymer paint on canvas152.0 x 152.0 cmPrivate collection, Brisbane© Courtesy of the artistPhotography: John O’Brien

John Citizenborn Australia 1955Unassailable heroes (Sweet damper) Famous since Captain Cook 1996synthetic polymer paint, pencil and watercolour80.0 x 120.0 cm (sheet)Art Gallery of Western Australia, PerthPurchased with funds from the Sir Claude Hotchin Art Foundation, 1999 © Courtesy of the artistPhotography: 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 Bennettborn Australia 1955Number nine 2004synthetic polymer paint on canvas152.0 x 152.0 cmSutton Gallery, Melbourne © Courtesy of the artistPhotography: 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

Questions/themes to consider:Unafraid of big issues for art, like individual and national identity, life and death, and the role of imagery in representation itself, questioning is at the heart of Bennett’s project.3

Interdisciplinary art practice, including the use of a range of materials and techniques to communicate meanings and messages.  What influence have new technologies had on the artist’s practice?

The role of signs and symbols in communicating meaning and messages The role of the audience in constructing meaning. What strategies does the artist use to actively engage the

audience in his work? Sources of inspiration and influence including personal experiences, historical, social and cultural events and

debates The influence of postmodernism, including referencing and appropriation of images drawn from diverse

sources. What conceptual and ethical issues and ideas are associated with this appropriation and referencing?

The relationship between the artist and the art industry. How does the art industry influence the public perception of art and artists? What evidence can be found in Bennett's work of the artist exploring issues related to the art industry?

What shifts and developments are evident in the body of work produced by Gordon Bennett over the last twenty years? What evidence of conceptual unity can be found in this body of work?

How does the concept of ‘individual style’ relate to Bennett’s art practice? What is the role of the artist  in society? How might Bennett be seen as a social commentator and/ or an

artist’s artist?  

I do believe art can function to expand one’s consciousness, to act as a catalyst perhaps, to exceed the boundaries of language and how it defines and limits understanding of the world in which we live.5

Bennett’s work as text. How does Bennett’s work communicate meaning and messages? What forms of language are used?

 How are words and images used in Bennett’s artwork? What does this reveal about the power and role of words and images in defining understandings of the world in which we live?

Bennett’s work as a context for other texts exploring issues related to personal and cultural identity and/or social and cultural issues and debates

Bennett’s work as inspiration for creative and critical writing

Despite his claim to be a history painter, Bennett wants to undo the hold of the usual stories told by modern historians. He is interested in what Australians historians do not say, in what they leave out….Bennett is not the chronicler of Australian history, but its exorcist.4

Art as a means of deconstructing history and exposing the ideologies and structures that shape history   Comparisons and links between Bennett’s perspectives on Australian history and culture with those of historians

and writers such as Henry Reynolds and John Pilger Issues of national and cultural identity, including factors that influence how these identities have been

constructed in the past and present Bennett’s work as a context for exploring political, social and cultural events, issues and debates including the

1988 Bicentenary, Sovereignty (land rights), Aboriginal deaths in custody, Republicanism, Citizenship,  the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq War