Identity Case Study: Gordon BennettIntroduction Gordon Bennett was born in Monto, Queensland in 1955. After working in various trades in his early life, Bennett enrolled as a matureage student at Queensland College of Art in 1986 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) degree in 1988. Since his first major solo exhibition in 1989 his work has been at the forefront of contemporary Australian art and has been recognised internationally for its innovative and critical engagement with ideas and issues of ongoing relevance to contemporary culture.

While Bennetts art is grounded in his personal struggle for identity as an Australian of Aboriginal and AngloCeltic descent, it presents and examines a broad range of philosophical questions related to the construction of identity, perception and knowledge. This includes a focus on the role and power of language, including visual representations, in shaping identity, culture and history.

Much of Bennetts work has been concerned with an interrogation of Australias colonial past and postcolonial present, including issues associated with the dominant role that white, western culture has played in constructing the social and cultural landscape of the nation. 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. The Notes to Basquiat: 911 series and the Camouflage series, which reflect on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the war in Iraq respectively, highlight Bennetts global perspective.

Bennetts art practice is interdisciplinary and encompasses painting, photography, printmaking, video, performance and installation. The critical and aesthetic strategies of postmodernism have had significant impact on the development of his art practice. His work is layered and complex and often incorporates images, styles or references drawn from sources such as social history text books, western art history and Indigenous art. Well-known Australian and international artists whose works are referenced in different ways in Bennetts work include Hans Heysen, Margaret Preston, Imants Tillers, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Colin McCahon and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Bennetts referencing, appropriation and recontextualisation of familiar images and art styles challenges conventional ways of viewing and thinking and opens up new possibilities for understanding the subjects Bennett explores.

In 1999 Bennett adopted an alter ego and began making and exhibiting Pop Art inspired images under the name of John Citizen, a persona representative of the Australian Mr Average.Bennett adopted this alter ego to liberate himself from the preconceptions that were often associated with his Aboriginal heritage and his identity and reputation as the artist Gordon Bennett.Since 2003 Bennett has been working on a series of non-representational abstract paintings that mark another significant shift in his practice. These paintings reflect Bennetts belief that after the Notes to Basquiat series of 2003, I had gone as far I could with the postcolonial project I was working through1. The emphasis on making art about art which is the focus of his non-representational abstract paintings, contrasts clearly with the focus on social critique that was integral to Bennetts earlier work, and is 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 an ongoing engagement with questions of identity, knowledge and perception.

Personal background Family, memory, experience During his childhood in the 1950s and 60s, Bennett lived with his family in Victoria and Queensland. He has described his upbringing as overwhelmingly Euro-Australian, with never a word spoken about my Aboriginal heritage. Gordon Bennett 1Bennetts Aboriginal heritage came through his mother. An orphan from a very young age, she was raised on Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission in Queensland, and later trained as a domestic at Singleton. This was common practice among young Aboriginal girls and women. Eventually Bennett's mother earned an official exemption that allowed her to leave the Mission. But the oppressive and restrictive laws that governed the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia until the late 1960s continued to impose on her life. 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 . 2

I cant 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

Bennett married in 1977. He and his partner bought a house and settled in the suburbs of Brisbane like other young couples. 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. 4He has 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. Our experiences in this society manifest themselves in neuroses, demoralization, anger, and in art. Adrian Piper 5

Bennetts art explores and reflects his personal experiences. Among these is the harrowing struggle for identity that ensued from the repression and denial of his Aboriginal heritage. He acknowledges that much of his work is autobiographical, but he emphasises that there is conceptual distance involved in his art making.my work was largely about ideas rather than emotional content emanating from some stereotype of a tortured soul. Gordon Bennett 6

History lessons Colonial and postcolonial perspectives

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 Bennett 7

The repression of Aboriginal heritage that Bennett experienced was reinforced by an education system and society dominated by a history built on the belief in Australia as terra nullius. Narratives of exploration, colonisation and settlement failed to recognise the sovereign rights (or sovereignty) of Australias Indigenous people.

Like many of his own and earlier generations, Bennetts understanding of the nations history was partly shaped by the sort of images commonly found in history books. 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. In images such as these, Aboriginal people are often absent or relegated to the background. These visual representations of history present the colonisers as powerful figures and as the bearers of learning and civilisation in a land of primitive people who have no obvious learning or culture.

E. Phillips FOXLanding of Captain Cook at Botany Bay 1770 1902 oil on canvas192.2cm x 265.4cm National Gallery of Victoria, Gilbee Bequest, 1902

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 Bicentennialgelatin silver photograph Newspix / News Ltd, Sydney

Brenda L. Croft Gurindji/Mutpurra born 1964Elders from Northern Territory, Chalmers Street, Redfern. Long March of Freedom, Justice and Hope, Invasion Day, 26 January 1988 1988 gelatin silver photograph50.4 x 37.6 cm (image); 50.4 x 40.5 cm (sheet) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Brenda Croft/Licensed by VISCOPY Australia

Gordon Bennettborn Australia 1955Untitled 1989oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas(1-6) 30.0 x 30.0 cm (each)Museum of Contemporary Art, SydneyGift of Doug Hall 1993 (1993.281) Courtesy of the artistPhotography: Richard Stringer

Bennetts final year at art college in 1988 coincided with the Bicentenary of European settlement of Australia. Celebrations continued throughout the year and gave renewed focus to traditional images and stories of the nations settlement history. A fleet of tall ships sailed around Australia as part of the commemoration of settlement. They became a potent symbol of the celebrations.

By the late 1980s there was also a growing awareness within Australian society of the injustices suffered by the Indigenous population as a result of their dispossession. The Bicentenary celebrations triggered increased activism, protests and public d