Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett

Thu 24 Sep 2020

The art and legacy of Gordon Bennett (1955–2014), one of Australia’s most influential contemporary artists, will be on show at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) from 7 November 2020 to 21 March 2021. ‘Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett’ celebrates the Queensland-based artist’s globally recognised contribution to contemporary art.

The exhibition showcases Bennett’s key series in depth, his most important and admired works, and includes many works which have rarely if ever been exhibited. Bennett voraciously consumed art history, current affairs, rap music and fiction, and processed it all into an unflinching critique of how identities are constituted and how history shapes individual and shared cultural conditions.

200 artworks ranging from installation and sculptural assemblage to painting, drawing, video and ceramics, drawn from private and public collections, as well as the artist’s estate, is the first major survey of the artist’s work in over a decade.

Born and raised as a European Australian in the regional town of Monto, central Queensland, Bennett grew up knowing his father was a migrant of Anglo-Celtic descent, however it wasn’t until he was a young teenager when he learnt his mother was Indigenous and that she had spent her childhood in the Cherbourg Aboriginal mission before training as a domestic helper. This revelation of a dual identity was a life-changing event for Bennett, especially in the context of 1960s Australia, a decade in which the country grappled with its history, not least in finally giving its original inhabitants the right to vote and be recognised in the national census.

Bennett commenced full-time study at Brisbane’s Queensland College of Art at the age of 30. From that time on he drew on contemporary postcolonial theory to explore the workings of society, and to reflect on racial violence and social and cultural inequities he observed at home and internationally, and their ramifications for individual and collective identity.

‘Unfinished Business’ celebrates Bennett as an artist of great passion and sensitivity whose prolific body of work continues to encourage audiences to question mainstream historical accounts, established fields of knowledge, and the ways we think about the world including Australia’s colonial past and post-colonial present.

Highlights of the exhibition include Bennett’s early compositions, installations, the welt and mirror series, and paintings and drawings driven by Bennett’s fascination with and perceived shared experience with the African-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Bennett’s late works seek understanding around sovereignty, citizenship and how to ensure multiple perspectives exist together truthfully. Many of the cultural and social divides his works speak to remain unchanged today. Drawing is also a major focus of the exhibition, with more than 100 working and finished compositions that reflect the artist’s unique visual language.

‘Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett’ was in the Marica Sourris and James C. Sourris AM Galleries (3.3 and 3.4), Gallery of Modern Art from 7 November 2020 until 21 March 2021.

The publication

At 200 pages and with more than 120 colour illustrations, Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett includes works created from the 1980s to 2014 sourced from studio, public and private collections, including early installation works; Bennett’s ‘history’ paintings; mirror paintings, De Stijl works; his ‘Home décor’ series; ‘Notes to Basquiat’ works; abstract ‘Stripe’ paintings; and late works showing renewed engagement with political contexts. Pages from the artist’s personal notebooks, as well as archival photographs provided by the Gordon Bennett Estate, provide intimate insight into how the artist worked. The publication has been sponsored by the Gordon Darling Foundation.