Richard Bell at Milani Gallery ( Gabrielle Mactaggart)

      

     Richard Bell’s latest exhibition currently showing at Milani Gallery, Wooloongabba provokes viewers to reflect on deeply embedded attitudes to race in Australian culture. Four compelling works dominate the main gallery. Billboard scale, in a cacophony of colour, pattern and text, Bells paintings virtually shout out at each other across the gallery space with powerful effect. These works are Bell’s fifteenth in a series of twenty he calls his “Theorem Paintings,” based on a paper he wrote on the Aboriginal art industry in 2002.

Brisbane-based Bell, a member of the Aboriginal urban artist group ProppaNOW describes himself as ‘more as an activist than an artist.’ (Bell, 2008) Known as a bit of a stirrer, Bell employs humour and satire to approach contentious issues in Australian society. The result is thought provoking and some consider controversial.

This exhibition titled, You’d Believe Me if I Was A White Man features bold and direct Biblical texts. Quotes, such as “ The first shall be last and the last shall be first” and “ ask and ye shall receive, ” materialize in stark white letters against a pop art patchwork of grids, drips and vivid colour. Bell understands the power of words. Appropriating the language of church and missionaries, his quotes challenge and complicate held meanings by white Australians and offer new perspectives to historical rhetoric.   

The exhibition continues upstairs with several smaller works including, A White Hero For Black Australia.  A work Bell did in collaboration with Emory Douglas. With pop and commercial art references the painting depicts the famous Black Panther salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic games. The title refers to Australian silver medalist Peter Norman who stood in solidarity with American medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos to protest against apartheid. The backlash for Norman was the end of his Olympic career. It’s a strong piece, and one you want to linger on, but it’s hard not to be distracted by  the visual inducements on other walls.  


Sharing the mezzanine space, Bell's Ten Commandment  paintings  like optical puzzles, play with illusion and visual perception.  Collectively it’s a powerful and extraordinarily intense experience that resonates long after viewing.

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Bell R 2008 Half light portraits Gallery of New South Wales retrieved 15^th, August from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcTo3