Major Gordon Bennett Survey Opens At Goma

Major Gordon Bennett Survey Opens at GoMA

Complex and sometimes confronting paintings about Australian cultural identity and postcolonial politics feature in the major exhibition of Queensland artist Gordon Bennett's work opening at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) tomorrow.

Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said the comprehensive retrospective exhibition showing until August 3, would feature key works from Bennett's early years, as well as examples from his well-known 'Notes to Basquiat' and 'Home Dcor' series.

A National Gallery of Victoria Touring Exhibition, the show features more than 80 works by the internationally acclaimed artist including key paintings, works on paper, installations and video performance.

'The exhibition includes work from 1987 sourced from private and public collections including the Queensland Art Gallery; Museum of Modern Art, Heide; Art Gallery of Western Australia; and the National Gallery of Victoria,' Mr Ellwood said.

'Given Bennett was born in regional Queensland and continues to live here in Brisbane, the exhibition also takes on a special significance for Queensland audiences,' he said.

Mr Ellwood said the exhibition charts Bennett's journey from the raw expressionist paintings, produced after his graduation from art school, to his recent and dramatic shift to abstraction.

'It celebrates his outstanding contribution to contemporary Australian art, and reflects not only the diversity of his work but the continuing relevance of the issues he addresses,' he said.

'Throughout his work Bennett has consistently challenged representations of Australian cultural identity for both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians through his work.

'The exhibition shows how Bennett's work interrogates representations of history and the constructed nature of knowledge and perception. It prompts us into a re-thinking of our own personal beliefs and positions,' he said.

Gordon Bennett was born in 1955 in Monto, Queensland. He studied Fine Arts at the Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, graduating in 1988, and received the Mot & Chandon Fellowship in 1991 and the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize, National Gallery of Victoria, in 1997.

A catalogue on the exhibition will be available from the Gallery Store and online from www.australianartbooks.com.au. 'Gordon Bennett' is a National Gallery of Victoria Touring Exhibition. It is supported by the Contemporary Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and state and territory governments.

ENDS


MEDIA INQUIRIES
Amelia Gundelach
Media Coordinator
Queensland Art Gallery
tel: 61 (0) 7 3840 7162
61 (0) 404 994 985
fax: 61 (0) 7 3840 7257
e:[email protected]


GORDON BENNETT IMAGES
www.qag.qld.gov.au/bennett/media


SOURCE: Queensland Art Gallery