Gordon Bennet Analysis

Essay on Conceptual Framework

Gordon Bennet was born in Monto, Queensland, near Bundaberg in 1955. Gordon is of some Welsh decent and was brought up believing he was white. He later found out in his career that he had some aboriginality. Bennet grew up ashamed of his aboriginality and recalls frequent situations when Aborigines were brought up in conversation. Gordon remembered at school sitting around listening to 'boong' jokes and he thought there was no way he could identify himself to be the butt of those jokes. Gordon remembers certain prominent derogatory opinions made about indigenous people at social gatherings. Gordon states ''I was socialised into an essentially Anglo-Saxon Eurocentric society where attitudes to indigenous people
He uses other artist's images and gives them an entirely different meaning. The art world would call this appropriation. The outsider was painted in 1988, with the dimensions of 290 by 180cm, and was painted on canvas using oil and acrylic paints. My interpretation of the artwork is that its showing conflict between his duel heritages. An example of this is shown where there is a mix of European art strokes and Aboriginal dot painting. His aboriginal self has no head which suggests he's lost his aboriginal identity. The two white heads lying on a bed in front of the figure, suggest he has lost his connection to his white heritage to some extent. His hands are also white even though the rest of him is depicted as being Aboriginal. This means he has been at the mercy of white hands. Overall it implies he is alienated and unconnected to both sides of his
In 1988, the same year Gordon painted the 'Outsider' there was a bicentennial anniversary of white settlement in Australia. Aboriginals had an invasion day to express how they felt about white settlement. The stories of the stolen generation were in the news, and as a person who didn't know his own heritage growing up it probably brought up his own anger and emotions. He painted the 'outsider' while he was studying at art school and he was majorly influenced by Van Gogh's work. He studied Van Gogh to a large extent and was influenced by his search for meaning and identity. He even quoted or appropriated from two of Van Gogh's works in his own painting. This impacted his art