Western Art Doesn't Exist - Athena Thebus

Richard Bell Prelude to a Trial (Bell's Theorems) 2011

                                        

Richard Bell Scienta E Metaphysica (Bell's Theorems) 2003

 

It’s Richard Bell’s use of language that is most successful of his work. Loaded statements, simple, straightforward and at times humorous in delivery. Throughout his career, Bell’s work is consistent in its political potency and his latest solo exhibition at Milani Gallery shows his most recent and compelling work.

‘Western Art Doesn’t Exist’, it says in white capital letters – sandwiched between stylised Indigenous patterns and Pollock like drips. Acrylic on linen, this is Bell’s latest theorem Prelude to a Trial (2011). This latest theorem coupled with Scienta E Metaphysica (Bell’s Theorems) (2003), or perhaps better known as, ‘Aboriginal Art It’s a White Thing’, I find particularly powerful in articulating the precarious interplay of Contemporary and Indigenous Art today.

Western Art does exist, it has its own canon that includes and excludes certain works of art. It categorises itself while simultaneously categorises other kinds of art in an act of separation. Perhaps, we do not always see the category of Western Art because we are so entrenched in the paradigm that it becomes invisible, just as ‘Aboriginal Art’ would be to the Indigenous Australian paradigm. ‘Aboriginal Art’ really is a ‘White Thing’.

His theorems are invasive prompts – self-referential of its state between the two categories that provoke the viewer to draw distinctions, similarities and the inhibiting boundaries between what is considered as Western Art and Aboriginal Art. Bell’s theorems are developing a stimulating substrate language that employs tropes of western art history in a manner that speaks both as Richard Bell and as a collective Indigenous voice.

Athena Thebus