He acknowledged that much of his work was autobiographical, but he emphasises that there was conceptual distance involved in his art making . Bennett continued to work in new ways with materials, techniques and images throughout his career. From a distance the figure resembles a sculpture of a heroic Classical figure. Gordon Bennett (1955-2014) voraciously consumed art history, current affairs, rap music and fiction, and processed it all into an unflinching critique of how identities are constituted and how history shapes individual and shared cultural conditions. 2 February 2021. SOLD FEB 10, 2023. 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. Bennetts final year at art college in 1988 coincided with the Bicentenary of European settlement of Australia. Discover Gordon Bennett's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Possession Island 1991 was recently purchased by the Historic Houses Trust of NSW. 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. 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. As an Australian of both Aboriginal and Anglo Celtic descent, Bennett felt he had no access to his indigenous heritage. These act as disturbances. He serves as a counterpoint to Gordon Bennetts Other, and yet we are the one and the same. I needed to change direction at least for a while. Das Jahr 1904 brachte mit dem Gordon-Bennett-Rennen in Deutschland und dem Vanderbilt Cup in den USA einen weiteren Aufschwung des Motorsports vor allem auch auerhalb Frankreichs, wobei fr das Rennen in New York erstmals europische Fahrer und Rennstlle nach bersee gereist waren. Some supporters applauded his escape but his claim that he left to pass on his knowledge about how to fight the Japanese - given his lack of success . Felicity Allen, Gordon Bennett interviewed by Felicity Allen in the. She was one of the first Australian artists to recognise the spiritual significance of Aboriginal art and the land. Gordon Bennett, an Australian Aboriginal artist, demonstrates this theory through his work. His work also includes performance art, video, photography and printmaking. This influence is seen in the rhythmic movement of Bennetts Notes to Basquiat series. Possession Island No 2 1991 is a painting that shows the British explorer Captain James Cook and other compatriots hoisting the Union flag to claim the eastern coast of Australia for the British Crown in 1770. Bennett only used two colours, symbolically, red and black. 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. How have these sciences influenced the perception and understanding of Indigenous people and cultures? 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. Mixing of pure blood with European blood was feared by Europeans, authenticity was at risk and identity diluted. Bennett was aware of the role binary opposites, such as self/other, play in constructing personal and cultural identity. John Citizen lets me take my Australian citizenship and cultural upbringing back from the netherworld of the imagined Other. Bennetts recent abstract paintings reflect links to a range of artists including Australians Robert McPherson, Emily Kam Kngwarray and Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, and International artist Frank Stella. 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. Bennett presents each image with a single word, written in capitals, that boldly asserts a new meaning for them. 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. Western art has a long tradition of creating an illusion of three- dimensional space on a flat surface. Linear perspective is a system for organising visual information. What does Bennetts goal for his work suggest to you about how he views the role of art? 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. More broadly, it recalls the lives of many young Aboriginal women who followed a similar destiny. Brainstorm ideas and meanings associated with these binary opposites and create a mindmap to show how they have influenced your perception and understanding of the world. . 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. Lichtenstein 19231987). For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, this was a time to mourn the devastating consequences of 200 years of colonisation. 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. In Calverts etching, an Aboriginal man holds a drinks tray. Scan these into the computer using a photographic software package like Photoshop. An orphan from a very young age, she was raised on Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission in Queensland, and later trained as a domestic at Singleton. In the past Quadroon, was a socially acceptable term used to label Indigenous people as a way of establishing genetic heredity. Gordon Bennett Possession Island (Abstraction), 1991 Kevin Gilbert Christmas Eve in the Land of the Dispossessed, 1968; 1992 KEY ARTIST ONE- VERNON AH KEE Born 1967, Innisfail, Queensland. a moment of possession; the place where he came ashore and allegedly claimed . The Notes to Basquiat series takes appropriation to yet another level within Bennetts art practice. The representation of Aborigines has been reduced to caricature. 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. List some of your own qualities and attributes. Gordon Bennett Possession Island - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf) or read online for free. The work is a copy of a copy of a copy. 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. Bennett used 9/11 and its global impact three months after the event as the stage for his discourse on cultural identity. 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 Bennetts 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, Bennetts 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. Every object is carefully and clearly painted, yet the images conceptually blur together as they intersect and interlace through the grid, across the canvas. EUR 7,81. Using this list, find a range of artworks that you could appropriate to help communicate your personal identity visually. After years of critiquing art-historical standards, Bennett has himself become the standard bearer. Like many others at that time, Bennett was inspired by the work of the historian Henry Reynolds. Basquiats signature crown hovers beneath a tag-like image of fire. Choose a selfportrait by Gordon Bennett that interests you. Gordon Bennett, The Manifest Toe, in Ian McLean & Gordon Bennett, The Art of Gordon Bennett, Craftsman House/ G + G Arts International, Sydney, 1996, pp.962.Kelly Gellatly et.al., Gordon Bennett: A Survey, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2007. It is uttered by all good Muslims before a good deed. The timeline could be presented in hardcopy for display in the classroom, or as an ICT project incorporating images and audio. James Gordon Bennett What does this comment suggest to you about the purpose of Bennetts questioning of history? John Citizen was an abstraction of the Australian Mr Average, the Australian everyman. He is not disturbed by slashes of paint, but painted carefully and outlined by the precise grid behind him. Gordon Bennett Possession Island (Abstraction) 1991 oil and acrylic on canvas 182 x 182cm Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Tate, purchased jointly with funds provided by the Qantas Foundation, 2016 The Estate of Gordon Bennett The mirror at the bottom left-hand corner of the painting represents Bennetts own shaving mirror. Discuss with reference to a selection of at least three works, clearly identifying stylistic shifts, and evidence of conceptual unity. 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. Most Australians were shocked and scandalised that public money was spent on something they neither appreciated nor understood. Collection: Museum of Sydney, Sydney Living Museums I didnt go to art college to graduate as an Aboriginal Artist. 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. Gordon Bennetts Possession Island 1991, highlights the influence that visual images have on our understanding of history, and the way that visual images often reflect the values of the social / historical context in which they are made. So, painting in an overtly abstract manner was a way to go silent on the issues involved and yet still keep painting. Such accolades and critical recognition are keenly sought by many artists. That was to be the extent of my formal education on Aborigines and Aboriginal culture until Art College. Reynolds wrote books and articles about the history of Australian settlement as a story of invasion and genocide. However, Bennetts 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. Bennett was in possession of all four, all of which will become evident upon a glance at a summary of his life. This image also translates to mean: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. This education resource accompanies the retrospective exhibition Gordon Bennett (2008) which showcased 85 works by this internationally acclaimed Australian artist. Gordon Bennett, Possession Island, 1991, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas; two parts, 162 x 260cm (overall). 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 fullbloods are real Aborigines. | Tate Images. Collect a range of images (both art and media sources) that depict characters that are perceived or presented as typically Australian. He probed ideas about identity, fuelled partly by his own . These qualities expose some of the complications that arise from understandings built on binary opposites. The Constitution is being rethought with respect to Indigenous Australians, and treaty-making is on the agenda yet the Uluru Statement from the Heart was roundly ignored by the Federal Government. Our experiences in this society manifest themselves in neuroses, demoralization, anger, and in art. 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. 'Bloodlines' In a conceptual sense I was liberated from the binary prison of self and other; the wall had disintegrated but where was I? 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. Opens in a new window or tab. Sell with Artsy Artist Series Portraits of Artists and Sculptors 113 available How do these systems/conventions reflect values and ideas important to that culture? 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. Samuel Calverts engraving, Captain Cook taking possession of the Australian continent on behalf of the British Crown AD 1770, became the starting point for Bennetts exploration. From early in his career he was inspired by theories and ideas associated with postmodernism. Finally, Ive never been one to make art about art before. 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. An understanding of self in the context of family is not enough. Bennett's work is held in over 100 public and private collections, including many major state institutions such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. This was common practice among young Aboriginal girls and women. L120238 Gordon Bennett. 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 nations history and culture. Lindt created many photographic portraits of Aboriginal subjects. Within the Home dcor series Gordon Bennett escalates the sampling and quoting of other artists and works to develop a pastiche. He used his self as the vehicle to do so. 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. 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. I am purposely not defining him only as Aboriginal because he himself does not want to be defined only as such. 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. This led him to adopt an artistic alter ego, John Citizen. Gordon Bennett 1. ), Heide Museum of Modern Art , Melbourne, 2004 pp. He tried a career as an actuarial clerk, attending Hawthorn College after Balwyn State School. cat. . Explore a range of ideas and media within your work. 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 . There are a number of reasons why I began painting abstract paintings that focused on overt visual phenomena, as opposed to explicit visual content. Image: Gordon Bennett, Australia 1955-2014, Possession Island, 1991. Image credit: Gordon Bennett - Possession Island (1991). 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. Mondrian, a Dutch De Stijl artist and a Theosophist, used art to search empirical truths and their source. During 199495 at summer school Bennett learnt to make digital videos on an Apple PowerMac computer. Gordon Bennett, Possession Island (1991)*. He painted his most famous work, Guernica (1937), in response to the Spanish Civil War; the totemic grisaille canvas remains a definitive work of anti-war art. Gordon Bennett born Australia 1955 Possession Island 1991 oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas (a-b) 162.0 x 260.0 cm (overall) Museum of Sydney on the site of first Government House, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales. 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. The figure is dressed in tattered western clothing. Purchased with funds from the Foundation for the Historic Houses Trust, Museum of Sydney Appeal, 2007. Possession Island (Abstraction), Gordon Bennett, 1991, Oil paint and acrylic paint on canvas. Clear visual divisions are created with distinct black areas as well as large white areas. 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 . Cooee Art Auctions works with artists bi-annually across two separate departments - Indigenous Fine Art and Modern & Contemporary Fine Art. The artist Gordon Bennett led a reclusive life. What aspects of Bennetts works might viewers focus on as emotional? Australian politics is fraught yet the Australian public is disengaged. Gordon Bennett rapidly established himself in the Australian art world. James Gordon Bennett was born on a farm near Enzie, around three miles from Buckie, in 1795 but chose to follow a friend to North America when aged 24 with just 5 in his pocket. Gordon Bennett POSSESSION ISLAND 1991 Titled, dated (1992) and signed by the artist on each panel and bears various exhibition related inscriptions and labels on the stretchers, and inscribed with date of completion 29.12.91 on the reverse of the right panel Synthetic polymer paint on canvas (diptych) 162 by 130 cm each panel, 162 by 260 cm overall The purer the bloodlines, the more Aboriginal you were. But in Bennetts painting disparate diagrams, symbols and images disrupt the illusion, presenting the landscape as a site where many ideas and viewpoints compete. Bennetts distinctive visual language repositions the subject of the work, claiming the Aboriginal perspective as central to the historical moment of the original painting. Fri. 10-9, Sat. They became a potent symbol of the celebrations.