c.+Gordon+Bennett

== = = = = = Gordon Bennett .= Find stories or narratives that relate to Gordon Bennett's paintings.

B. Sam

C. Luke

G. Alon

G. Richard

Layering and re-defining – Creating new language
Within the //Home décor// series Gordon Bennett escalates the sampling and quoting of other artists and works to develop a [|pastiche]. //Home Décor (Algebra) Ocean//, 1998 synthesises the work of [|Piet Mondrian](1872–1944), [|Margaret Preston] (1875–1963) and later in the series, [|Jean–Michel Basquiat](1960–1988) among others. Bennett also includes copies and samples of his own work, such as //Possession Island// and //Big Romantic painting (The Apotheosis of Captain Cook)// 1993, with other found images. These images are fused and overlapped in a dynamic composition underpinned by Mondrian-style grids. Every object is carefully and clearly painted, yet the images conceptually blur together as they intersect and interlace through the grid, across the canvas. He is taking the micky out of the linear notion of history – he has frayed, teased and textured that linear notion. Margo Neale [|7] Bennett compels the viewer to engage with and question the values and ideas of the artists he has appropriated. Mondrian, a Dutch [|De Stijl] artist and a [|Theosophist], used art to search ‘empirical’ truths and their source. Theosophy means ‘god wisdom’, the belief that everything living or dead is put together from basic blocks that lead towards consciousness. I construct lines and colour combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature … inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things… Piet Mondrian [|8] For Mondrian the grid became the essence of all forms. Bennett’s grid formations seem to imprison the figures within the canvas. However, he offers more than one interpretation of the grid’s use, which is indicated by the sampling of works by Australian artist Margaret Preston. Preston envisioned the creation of an ‘Australian’ aesthetic. She was one of the first Australian artists to recognise the spiritual significance of Aboriginal art and the land. She attempted to create works that reflected a sense of national identity by incorporating Aboriginal motifs and colours in her work. Some of Preston’s appropriations however, demeaned and trivialised the way Aborigines were depicted and understood. Many Indigenous Australians saw this appropriation as further evidence of a justification of colonisation and a Eurocentric interpretation of Aboriginal culture. Bennett confronts and questions the appropriateness of this borrowing. Physically, the [|kitsch]Aboriginal motifs copied from Preston are trapped. The representation of Aborigines has been reduced to [|caricature]. Bennett has layered these two distinctly different artists with his own work – work previously appropriated from yet another context. Mondrian cages the figures, Preston objectifies the figures; Bennett accommodates both to grasp the intangible and dissect these limited interpretations and stereotypes. He is in fact attempting to construct a new language. H. Nic I began to use illustrations out of old social studies and history textbooks by way of critical intervention in the seamless flow of images that I plainly saw was designed to reinforce the popular myths and ‘common sense’ perspective of an Australian colonial identity and ‘pop’ history. I had in mind to create fields of disturbance which would necessitate re-reading the image, and the mythology. Gordon Bennett In //Possession Island//, 1991, Bennett meticulously photocopies and enlarges Calvert’s image so that it can be projected, cropped and copied onto the canvas. Calvert’s image becomes one of the layers of the painting. It is reproduced in flat, bold and black line work. Bennett lodges this image in layers of dots and slashes of red and yellow paint that refer to other artists and images. These act as ‘disturbances’. They physically prevent the viewer from seeing the image clearly, but psychologically encourage the viewer to delve into the image more deeply and question: Where did these images come from that they’re relating back to in their minds in order to stage this re- enactment? It’s like images become part of the Australian unconscious. They’re 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. Gordon Bennett []

L Tex

M. Julian

P. Ben At art college Bennett discovered how Australian identity was built on a subjective ‘writing’ of history. He found this liberating. As one of the dispossessed within this biased history, he claims that his only tool to combat this bias is the art of mimicry. He uses familiar and recognisable images that are part of an Australian consciousness to explore and question the meaning of these images. Ian McLean makes parallels between the ‘mimicry’ in Bennett’s work and the well-known myth of Echo.3 Hera, wife of Zeus, condemned Echo with the punishment of no voice. She could only echo or mimic the voices of others. This loss of identity caused her disappearance. Unable to express herself, she was defeated by the voices of others. This story can help explain Bennett's use of existing images, including other artworks. Due to his Eurocentric education and upbringing, Bennett feels he has no ‘voice’, he therefore ‘quotes’ and ‘samples’. But unlike Echo Bennett is empowered by echoing the voice of the past. This enables a new discourse about history to emerge. One of the most heroic and well-known images of Australia’s past is Captain Cook landing in Botany Bay in 1770. This event was re-enacted in many pageants and dramatisations during Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988, as a way of celebrating 200 years of Australian history. It is interesting to note that this same year was declared a period of mourning by Aboriginal people. The impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people and culture from this point was devastating. It is no accident that Bennett uses this event to question the way history is written and interpreted. Samuel Calvert’s engraving, //Captain Cook taking possession of the Australian continent on behalf of the British Crown AD 1770//, became the starting point for Bennett’s exploration. He quotes directly from this image, which is in fact a copy of a copy, as Samuel Calvert copied this image of Captain Cook landing in Botany Bay from a previous image by Gilfillan, which is now lost. It is appropriation of an image that has already been copied with an image that has become central in the pysche of an Australian history. It demonstrates Bennett’s understanding of the power of this image. In //Possession Island//, 1991, Bennett meticulously photocopies and enlarges Calvert’s image so that it can be projected, cropped and copied onto the canvas. Calvert’s image becomes one of the layers of the painting. It is reproduced in flat, bold and black line work. Bennett lodges this image in layers of dots and slashes of red and yellow paint that refer to other artists and images. These act as ‘disturbances’. They physically prevent the viewer from seeing the image clearly, but psychologically encourage the viewer to delve into the image more deeply and question:

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T. Dave 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] //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. 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 Bennet

W. Tom

Z. Kingsley