Richard Bell Read Bio Collapse
Richard Bell (b. 1953) lives and works in Brisbane, Australia. He works across a variety of media including painting, installation, performance and video. One of Australia’s most significant artists, Bell’s work explores the complex artistic and political problems of Western, colonial, and Indigenous art production.
Europeans love nothing better than to indigenize their racist humanism when they themselves are in crisis—it is one of their most dearly loved moves. While the Western world has now fully penetrated the globe with their model of universal competition, the political economy they’ve violently assigned our communities cannot address the situation that any of us now face together. There is no more planet or time left.
Aboriginal Art has become a product of the times. A commodity. The result of a concerted and sustained marketing strategy, albeit, one that has been loose and uncoordinated. There is no Aboriginal Art Industry. There is, however, an industry that caters for Aboriginal Art. The key players in that industry are not Aboriginal. They are mostly white people whose areas of expertise are in the fields of Anthropology and “Western Art.” It will be shown here how key issues interrelate to produce the phenomenon called Aboriginal Art, and how those issues conspire to condemn it to non-Aboriginal control. Like some voracious ancient God, Western Art devours all offerings at will. Sometimes the digestion will be slow and painful.