Gordon Bennett

Bennett's art contains numerous references to Australian culture, Aboriginal history, inter-racial relations, politics and life in the suburbs. He is now vitally concerned with the issues relating to cultural identity, especially within a historical context. He appropriates and re- contextualises various images, that have accumulated historical meaning and re-presents these visual fragments in new ways. An example of such painting is 'outsider.' Vincent Van Gogh had greatly influenced Gordon and this painting makes a clear visual reference to Van Goghs 'bedroom at Arles', which was painted in 1888. painting a hundred years later, during Australia's Bicentennial year Bennett reflected on the many negative connotations of this 'celebration' for Australian Aborigines, especially with regard to the murder and suppression of an indigenous culture. Bennett sees Van Gogh as an outsider and regards himself and other Aborigines in the same way. Bennett said 'outsider to me is a self portrait revealing to me both an empathetic response to Vincent and a hostility from part of myself, my Aboriginal heritage which I had learnt to despise and am now learning to accept, through art.' In the outsider Bennett used one of the bedroom scenes Van Gogh painted when he was expecting a visit from Gogan. All of Vincent's dreams disappearing and basically causing him to behave irrationally and cut of part of his ear really inspired Gordon. For that reason he inserted the Aboriginal headless body into that bedroom. In a way 'bedroom at Arles' is an icon of European culture and it was a quite confrontational thing to do, to place the aboriginal headless figure with the blood sporting upwards to join with another one of Van Gogh's famous works 'starry night.' Bennett's painting 'self portrait (but I always wanted to be one of the good guys)' is an appropriation of McCahon's 'victory over death 2.' In this artwork he unproblematically constructs his European identity. The composition of Bennett's picture is borrowed from it with the words "I AM" appearing in a related configuration. While in McCahon's painting the letters "I AM" are just black letters, in Bennett's picture the outlines of these words are filled with images of conflict. Bennett's own version of McCahon's painting is quite ironic in that there is an Aboriginal child dressed in a cowboy suit when dark people are always said to be the 'bad' guys and the cowboys, the white people, are always the 'good' guys.

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