Gordon_Bennett_Essay_-'the_Coming_of_the_Light'_and_'Big_Romantic_Paiting'

Gordon Bennett Essay Gordon Bennett is one of Australia’s leading artists. His high level of skill as an artist combined with his strong and engaging concepts allow him to be highly celebrated within Australia and internationally. His work mainly focuses on questioning his own identity as an Aboriginal and as an Australian, as well as interrogating Australia’s past including the role of western or ‘White’ culture and its dominant effect on Australia's social and cultural identity. Bennett is in a continuous struggle with identity, and is constantly using this theme throughout his works. He even adopted an alter ego in 1999 by the name ‘John Citizen’ in order to escape the presumptions that the public had about him and his work because of his Aboriginal heritage. The National Gallery of Victoria held an exhibition of his works in 2007, which sparked my interest in his work and in his ideas, forcing him to become one of my favourite Australian artists. Bennett’s body of work incorporates a wide variety of mediums and techniques, including painting, printmaking, video, photography, installation and performance. His works are always layered with multiple meanings and messages, portrayed through effective symbolism. He uses both appropriated images and styles from other artists that have influenced his practise and ideas. A few artists he references include Margaret Preston, Immants Tillers, Vincent Van Gogh, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hans Heysen and Jackson Pollock. He also often uses traditional Aboriginal artistic techniques such as dots, as well as the traditional yellows and reds that we associate with Aboriginal art today. In order to truly understand his work I have analysed two of my favourite pieces in detail, these works are ‘The Coming of the Light’ and ‘Big Romantic Painting (The Apotheosis of Captain Cook)’ ‘The Coming of the Light’ is a large scale (152x374cm) acrylic on canvas painting, created in 1987. When interpreting its meanings and messages its important to consider the symbolic, historical and cultural elements that Bennett has included. The work is a surreal, symbolic representation of white domination in Australian society. The background depicts and series of buildings creating a city landscape, just in front of the buildings there is a series of partially hidden white faces. The focal point of the work is a torch being held by a white arm on the right hand side of the canvas. This arm has a hand at its opposing end which is holding a belt that is hanging an Aboriginal head. This head is emerging from a block with the letter ‘A’ on it. Following this block are another 3 blocks with ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ written on them. While the images are complex to describe in words, the work flows beautifully. The way Bennett has constructed it allows your eyes to discover new layers that are not obvious upon first glance. The symbolism in ‘The Coming of the Light’ is both obvious and hidden, with many symbols encompassing dual meanings. The main message being conveyed in this work is an expression of identity by Bennett, as well as a deconstruction of history as Bennett forces the viewer to reconsider the accepted version of Australia's historical past. In terms of symbols, the most clear and confronting image is the white arm in the centre of the work. This arm represents the actions of the white people that invaded Australia; the torch represent Christianity as light often depicts truth or enlightenment – as they believed being non-Christian to be unacceptable. This point is reinforced in the title ‘The Coming of the light’. The arm is also representing the harsh treatment of the Aboriginals as they were believed to be savage and dangerous. The white faces symbolise the ‘accepted’ race of people in the Christian dominated society that was created, while the buildings in the background represent the destruction of Aboriginal land and culture. One of Bennett’s less obvious and cleverer symbolic representations is the use of the letters A, B, C and D on the blocks. Not only do these letters mark the foundation of the English language, they also stand for the derogatory racial terms ‘Abbo’, ‘Boong’, ‘Coon’ and ‘Darkie’. This work is clearly driven by a sense of injustice and causes people to question not only Australian history but Australia's identity as a nation. Another of Bennett’s works that I believe to be worth analysing is ‘Big Romantic Painting (The Apotheosisof Captain Cook)’ (1993). This work is also large in scale (182X405cm) and is synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Not unlike ‘The Coming of the Light’ the work consists of many layers of complex symbols and messages, as well as references to other artists and a number of different styles of painting. ‘Big Romantic Painting’ is an unrealistic composition of an Australian landscape, which contains real images, as well as aspects of surrealism. Bennett has used a series of dots to create the landscape – he does so as a reference to traditional Aboriginal art. The top left hand corner has an appropriated European Colonial image created with a series of black and white dots. The scale and use of bold, flat white forces this image to stand out, and it is balanced by an Aboriginal woman in a white European style dress in the opposite corner of the canvas. The central image and focal point or the work is Captain Cook’s head and hands emerging from water as though drowning, surrounded by red and yellow (aboriginal colours) splatters of paint in reference to Jackson Pollock, and black smudged handprints. While this central image is quite chaotic and has a great sense of movement, Bennett’s use of soft pink and pale browns gives the entire work feeling of calmness. Bennett’s use of appropriated images and styles add to the works complexity in terms of meanings and to the works aesthetic appeal. The main point of ‘Big Romantic Painting’ is very similar to ‘The Coming of the Light’ in that Bennett wants the viewer to rethink and reassess what they believe to be the truth in Australian history. He is making a strong political statement about the fact that ‘White Man’ invaded Australia and proceeded to destroy Aboriginal culture and that this fact has been omitted from the widely accepted version of history. While many Australian’s view Captain Cook as the heroic founder of our nation, Bennett has displayed him drowning in such a vulnerable and helpless state. This is in order to portray Cook as the enemy, rather than the hero. Again Bennett is depicting Christianity and also the British Empire through the appropriated European Colonial imagery. Another important symbol is the Aboriginal woman wearing western clothing. This represents white domination and the way they disapproved of Aboriginal culture and tried to change or ‘fix’ it. “Big Romantic Painting’ is both conceptually and aesthetically compelling, forcing viewers to think and revealing Bennett’s high level of skill in terms of composition and technique. Gordon Bennett’s body of work is both compelling and complex, yet so engaging and thought-provoking. I feel it’s a very personal release for him and is helping him understand himself and his personal identity. His works are strong in technique and admirably honest, and I believe that viewers have no option but to rethink what they have accepted as the truth about Aboriginal history.