Gordon Bennett: Figure of Speech, brings together works of varying media from the artist’s oeuvre, anchored together by their use of the written word.

Presented concurrently with QAGOMA’s major retrospective and the launch of the remarkable co-publication Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings (Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane and Power Publications, Sydney), Figure of Speech offers a focused review of Bennett’s rigorous and sustained examination of language as a complex structure that wields power.

The exhibition features paintings, works on paper and installations that are punctuated by diverse applications of the written word. Selected in consultation with the Estate of Gordon Bennett, and presented alongside excerpts from the new publication, these works demonstrate Bennett’s astute understanding of language as a force in the construction and expression of worldviews, as well as individual/communal identities and histories. As Tim Riley Walsh fittingly describes in Selected Writings, “Bennett’s art is equally traversed by reading as it is by looking”.

Survey exhibition –
Unfinished Business, QAGOMA

Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett is the first large-scale exhibition of Bennett’s oeuvre since 2007. 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.

Gordon 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. Audiences will experience almost 200 artworks ranging from installation and sculptural assemblage to painting, drawing, video and ceramics.

Location: Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Dates: 7 November 2020 – 21 March 2021
Curatorial Team: Zara Stanhope, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, and Abigail Bernal, Assistant Curator, International Art

Publication –
Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings

Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings brings together nearly forty published and unpublished essays, artist’s statements, letters, and interviews from across Bennett’s three-decade career, profiling the importance of the written word within the his art and broader intellectual practice. Offering new knowledge of his creative process, artistic influences and professional relationships, this project amplifies Bennett’s already significant contribution to subjects of race and identity in national and global contexts, as well as reaffirming his centrality to postcolonial discourse in the twenty-first century.

Publisher: Griffith University Art Museum and Power Publications
Editors: Angela Goddard and Tim Riley Walsh
Date: 2020
Paperback with dust jacket, RRP $45.00 AUD, ISBN 978-0-909952-01-3, 66 images, including colour plates, 216 pp, 297 x 210 mm, 890 gm

Book Launch –
Reading Bennett

To launch the the co-publication by Power Publications and Griffith University Art Museum, Reading Bennett: The Artist in his Own Words brings together four speakers who will select pieces from Bennett’s archive to read, and will then respond to his words in the context of their own practice and/or scholarship. Kelly Gellatly will consider the artist’s shifting attempts to control his public identity; Dr Stephen Gilchrist will speak of being reintroduced to Bennett through his writing practice; Judy Watson will find parallels between her practice and Bennett’s; and Tim Riley Walsh will reflect on his project to find Bennett’s voice through the archive.

Location: This is an online event, and will take place on Zoom
Date: Saturday 14 November 2020
Time: 11:30am – 12:45pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)

Artist’s Profile –
Gordon Bennett / John Citizen

Browse artworks and previous exhibitions at Sutton Gallery by Gordon Bennett.