Gordon Bennett University Visual Culture Essay 2014 by Bridy Jean Walker
Gordon Bennett
(Australian, 1955–2014)
The work called “Flowers for Mathinna” from the Home
Décor series by Australian artist Gordon Bennett (see figure 4) can be seen as an example of powerful
appropriation and visual assassination of the colonial invasion of Terra Nullius. Gordon Bennett utilizes a unique technique to
explore his own identity, half Indigenous/English, and consequently challenges
the glorified history of Australian colonization where legal possession was
taken by British government due to the classification of this ‘newly’
discovered continent as ‘Terra Nullius’ Latin for empty land or land with no
people as mentioned in ‘Bells Theorem’ (Bell, 2002). Bennett’s artwork uses an intense
amalgamation of styles and appropriation inspired from ‘white’ art history and
symbols from his own indigenous heritage and previous works to illuminate the
embedded racism and atrocities committed against the original Australians. Bennett’s work is further described in the
book History and Memory in the Art of Gordon Bennett:
“The
cornerstone to Bennett’s reputation as a painter are: his intellectual and
technical skills, his honest reading of Australia’s concern with its
post-colonial identity and his bravery in confronting himself and his nation
with the unspoken truths of the past and present” (Author p.8, 1999).
The impact of the multiple layers in the ‘Flowers for Mathinna’ leads to
further interpretation and investigation to understand these layers as Bennett
uses significant artists from history to appropriate and has found collisions
with such juxtapositions as Preston and Mondrian and his own iconic images from
Australian colonisation.
In Flowers for Mathinna the composition of signs
are arranged in such a way that there is much alluding and no illusion as to
the abuse of indigenous people not only on a physical level but on an even
deeper level with the dilution of Aboriginal art. Others have recognized this such as Butler:
“Obviously
the violence wrought by various colonial projects cannot be under-estimated,
and there could be demonstrably close relationships between seeing, knowing and
mastery. Pictorial representations could
play primary roles in the knowledge acquisition necessary for ordering,
controlling making a place one’s own.” (p.132, 2005).
Bennett
is able to convey this other tangible atrocity and claim back his ‘place’ by
highlighting Margaret Preston’s trivialization of indigenous art by using her
iconic symbolisms, motifs such as a bowl of native flowers placed next to a
sketch of ‘Mathinna’ this makes a cerebral connection once you take into
account the history of each image placed in the grid. The story of Mathinna can be best summarized
by Forrest (2013) with:
“The subject of the
painting, a young Tasmanian Aboriginal girl named Mathinna (1835–56), was taken from her biological parents and
later “adopted” by the Governor of Tasmania, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, for their own self-promoting. When Sir John
Franklin and his wife returned to England in 1843, Mathinna was cruelly
abandoned and sent to the Queen’s Orphan School.”
The
end of Mathinna’s story is mentioned in The Australian newspaper by Watson
(2011) “She found it difficult to adjust and eventually left the orphanage when
she was 16. Five years later, she was dead, aged 21. Destitute, she drowned in
a shallow muddy pool of water, having fallen face down in a drunken stupor.” This description somewhat dismisses her
plight yet Bennet brings to it another context by appropriating her historical portrait,
she becomes the central focus linking with the other images of colonial invasion,
the faceless figure with the Aboriginal flag and a delicately placed magnifying
glass near a ‘Preston-like’ native flower arrangement.
Preston’s
ideal was to use indigenous patterns and colour to make an authentic Australian
art using a primitivist style as
mentioned in History and Memory in the Art of Gordon Bennett: “Preston dreamed of a truly national art, one melded
from European modernism and Aboriginal art, an art made from the abstract
principles of both” (p.18, 1999) and Bennett’s description of Preston as
“stylistic utilitarianism”(p.19, 1999) verges on white picket fence sitting
when the artworks composition reveal otherwise. Mclean
(1998) promotes the subtle challenges of Bennett’s artworks using Margaret
Preston’s appropriations by stating that
“In
a retro art deco style, Bennett's new series recalls the mid-twentieth century
fashion for combining nationalist themes with abstract patterning inaugurated
by Margaret Preston. Preston's art remains amongst the most popular of
Australian paintings produced this century. Bennett's aim, however, is not to
just disrupt his typecasting, but to keep the attention on what has always been
his target the viewer's own consciousness and sense of place in Australia's
racial politics.”
This image of
Preston’s appropriated bowl of flowers and the black swan covered by another
appropriated image of Piet Mondrian’s grid the artwork becomes a bitter token insinuating
the arrogance of ‘white’ European culture.
The unquestioned practice of the time (circa 1800) was to take the
children from their biological parents as babies and ‘civilise’ them to the new
‘Christian’ good ways and blend the two cultures together just as Preston aimed
to do with her Decor art and create a ‘truly national art’. To further understand Bennett’s choice for
appropriating Preston the following extract is noted from ‘Bells Theorem’ which
states:
“The
Aboriginal People of Australia and people from other former colonies are most
upset about Appropriationism and consider it to be stealing. We couldn’t care
less about Western artists appropriating one another. But, we object strongly
to the appropriation of "our" artists’ work by non-aboriginal
people.... Aboriginal People all over the world are adamant that their
respective cultures are not for sale – that our cultures are the only things we
still own and that we will own and that we will struggle mightily to maintain
that ownership.”(Bell, 2002)
The concurrent ambiguity of historical art contexts
is something only the viewer can resolve as they may not be aware of Preston’s
trite aesthetic mentioned in Butler:
“...obsessive
concern with the appearance of things. Her sense of design over-determines her
way in the world...Her acute powers of visual selection and composition employ
an aesthetic and ahistorical look that emerged from nineteenth-century shifts
in Western scientific and disinterested appraisals of tribal objects” (p.207,
2005.)
Also the choice to use of Piet Mondrian’s abstract
grids can be seen as a visual framework which make it into palatable ‘Home
Décor’ while also signifying a cage or the imprisonment in each individual
artwork for example such as trapping the footprints and indigenous male figure
dot painting under the grid and noticing which images are freely placed on top
free of the grid such as the ‘daddy’s little girl’ image. Therefore the
Mondrian grid also serves as a stage placing Bennett’s art into the post-modern
context without “dragging it into the statics of décor, making it an art of the
storyboard, of the one themed rant...”(History and Memory in the art of Gordon
Bennett p.19, 1999) the artist is also quoted to say “...I am more interested
in the dynamic/static interplay between the binary opposites of
abstract/figurative, black/white, good/bad, right/wrong, inclusion/exclusion to
name a few.”
Yet these
binary opposites create many layers of interpretation. They also encompass a broad scope of historical
elements as expressed by Mclean:
“If there
seems an unbridgeable gulf between Mondrian's high art modernism and the modernist
kitsch it spawned, Bennett traces the echoes resounding in this gulf. And the
echoes sound like a kookaburra. Who would not laugh and carry on laughing at an
identity made from the unlikely combining of Mondrian's theosophical
internationalism with Preston's nationalist Aboriginalism? What sort of
republic is this? Yet Bennett has used Mondrian's iconic structure of dynamic
balances made from opposites as the basis for his fugue of figurative and
abstract elements, high art and kitsch, European and non-European signs -
surely the sorts of bizarre and unlikely”
(p.12,1998)
Bennett
has inhabited postcolonial Australia and revisited the past using his artwork
as a subaltern voice. Bennett has
managed to bring together many hidden ironies in regard to colonialism using
appropriation and deconstruction. Thus the
artist is taking back power by identifying and giving voice to the many
offensive indecencies. A proposed reality of Western Art is described best in Bell’s
Theorem (2002):
“During
the last century and a quarter Western Art has evolved into an elaborate,
sophisticated and complex system. This system supplies venues (museums,
galleries, etc), teaching facilities (art education institutions, drawing
classes, etc) and referees (art critics) and offers huge rewards for the chosen
few elite players in the game (including artists, curators, art critics, art
dealers and even patrons). This arrangement is not dissimilar to modern
spectator sports. It is also not unlike ancient religions – substitute Gods,
sacrificial offerings, High Priests, etc.
Like
some voracious ancient God, Western Art devours all offerings at will.
Sometimes the digestion will be slow and painful. However, it is resilient and
will inexorably continue on its pre-ordained path that is to analyse and
pigeonhole everything.
Western
Art is the product of Western Europeans and their colonial offspring. It
imposes and perpetuates superiority over art produced in other parts of the
World. For example, the African Masks copied by Picasso. Westerners drooled at
Picasso’s originality - to copy the African artists while
simultaneously ignoring the genius of the Africans.”
The concept of the indigenous subaltern in regards to
Bennett is described by Petelin (1999) aptly with:
“The
subaltern, as Gayatri Spivak has argued, cannot really speak. Subalterns were
the native under-officers taught the language of colonial oppressors so they
could pass on orders. Whenever they wanted to voice their own culture they were
caught in the Eurocentric trap of their adopted language. And, through the
cruelty of history rather than by choice, Bennett finds himself an Australian
Indigenous subaltern.
Bennett is thus compelled to recycle the language of Western culture. His only
hope is deconstruction. By bringing together discourse normally kept apart in
Western culture, Bennett exposes the contradictions in our ideology and the
skeletons in our history.”
There is no other way for Bennett to put voice to the
post-colonial inhabitants but with the intentional use of colonial images and
appropriating the already appropriated as expressed in ‘Flower’s for Mathinna’. This work is placed historically in a
position more than decorative and post-modern by giving expression to the collective
political voice as it was made at a time when the former Australian liberal
government refused to admit transgressions and say ‘sorry’. Bennett’s work fits
within the stream of contemporary indigenous artists such as Michael Cook (Crucifix & Undiscovered & Broken
Dreams) where religious codes and history are questioned with a multi-cultural
Australia as the audience “Historic images illuminate contemporary ones in
multiple ways (and vice versa). The
past, as L.P. Hartley so famously noted, is a foreign country. Any dialogue
between it and the present benefits from an interpreter.”(Butler p.301, 2005). Therefore
a deeper neo-colonial consciousness is activated within these interpretations
as there is no alternative for the general Australian public to be informed of
this rapprochement absent from the shopping malls and suburban sprawl.
There is no mistaking the point the artist is making
in Flowers for Mathinna with such a title as “Home Décor” revealing a
conscience between right and wrong for the viewer in a way that it is visually
teased out of sedation. Using selected elements and signifiers from
historically prominent artists Bennett is able to re-shape the direction of
Australian art even through a subaltern “white” education the ability to derive
a clear message that colonisation and trivialisation ‘is not okay’ will persist
on a post-colonial white gallery wall for all to see.
Reference List
Bell, R. (2002). Bell’s
Theorem. Aboriginal art -
It's a white thing! Retrieved from http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/great/art/bell.html
Butler, R. (ED.).
(2005). Radical revisionism. An anthology
of writings on Australian art. Fortitude Valley, Australia: Institute of
Modern Art Publishing.
Forrest,N. (2013). The
New MCA Sydney Foundation Buys a Gordon Bennett Painting. Retrieved from http://au.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/868805/the-new-mca-sydney-foundation-buys-a-gordon-bennett-painting
History and memory in
the art of Gordon Bennett. (1999). Ikon
Gallery, Birmingham and Henie-Onstad Kunstesenter, Oslo. Manchester, UK: Cornerhouse Publications
Watson, B. (2011). Public
works: Gordon Bennett. Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/public-works-gordon-bennett/story-e6frg8n6-1226001500992
Petelin, G. (1999) History
and Memory in the art of Gordon Bennett. Artlink ;Vol 19 no 4, 1999. Retrieved from http://www.artlink.com.au/articles/82/history-and-memory-in-the-art-of-gordon-bennett/
McLean, I. (1998),
Gordon Bennett's Home Décor: the joker in the pack, Law Text Culture, 4(1),
p.287-307.Retrieved from:http://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol4/iss1/18
Home decor (Algebra) boomerang
, 1998
Comments
Post a Comment