The art that made me: Richard Bell

‘A community of artists helped to shape me,’ says Richard Bell, who grew out of a generation of Aboriginal activists and remains committed to the politics of Aboriginal emancipation and self-determination.

‘Vernon [Ah Kee], Jennifer [Herd], Laurie [Nilsen], Gordie [Hookey], those discussions with them, that was the making of me,’ he explains, referring to proppaNOW, the collective of Meanjin / Brisbane-based Aboriginal artists of which Bell is a member. ‘I came to them a raw product, they gave me the polish.’

With a practice that spans painting, video and installation, Bell explores the complex artistic and political problems of art production in Australia. Works such as Pay the rent 2009, in the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ collection, and Embassy 2013, a recreation of the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy, embody activism and trigger reflection.

Those drawings, the Unwritten series, they are phenomenal works. There was one very much like this in a proppaNOW show that we had about 2008–09. I turned the lights out when I was walking past that drawing and it was like 3D, this face on the wall, it scared the shit out of me. They’re really sort of disconcerting. He’s got that ability to stir you, whether it’s words or these drawings that he does. A master practitioner – his drawing’s just sublime. And he’s made an art career where that’s just one aspect of his practice.

[Emory Douglas] was the minister of culture from the early days of the Black Panther Party. I was able to see a lot of parallels between our movements. That image [of Olympic athletes Peter Norman, Tommie Smith and John Carlos] came up in discussions and Emory had all these stories. [1968] was a really tumultuous year, and those guys turned up at the Olympics. [They] asked Peter Norman, the Australian guy, permission to make their statement and he agreed that they should proceed. He wore the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge and that act got him banned from ever representing Australia again. It’s one of the most recognisable images, still, in human history.

It’s so funny, and so loaded. The tank there and the little thing with the gun and the flag coming out the end. I love how he takes this thing, like a magnifying glass, and sets it off to the side. He crams so much information into his paintings. They’re really complex but it lightens the load, it’s human. It’s sort of cutting but it’s giving you a spoonful of sugar to take the medicine. His use of colour, his use of animation, the use of language; all those things draw me to his work.

Lin and his work were a huge influence on me. I started out making tourist art, boomerangs, spears, things like that. A bit later I ran into these guys who were making contemporary art, and Lin was one of the most interesting people I came across. He was such a great technician. But he also had lots of little innovative tools that helped him speed up his processes. Lin making work like that showed us the possibilities that were there in art. The fact that it was installation – goddamn, I didn’t know what installation was, I didn’t
even know it was an art. That was a whole new education for me. It encouraged me to expand my practice, to expand my thinking.