Artist Interview : Madeleine Grant

Artist Interview : Madeleine Grant

Madeleine Grant

Acrobat, aerialist, clown, printmaker, painter, and someone who constantly runs into doors instead of through them – roll up and meet Madeleine Grant, the centrepiece of this circus show. On the training mat of the high-ceilinged room of circus apparatuses and first aid kits at Vulcana Women’s Circus, we chat about the bones of an arts career.

Tristan Griffin, Elijah Jackson & Alexander Wright

As a fairly established performing artist in Brisbane, it seems crucial to ask: How and when did you first become interested in the arts – not just performing, but any kind of arts?

I started art school in 1992, just after my 18th birthday, and then was kind of working in Sydney at art school, we did guerrilla art shows as well, we did a few Warehouse break-ins… where we would do installation work and stuff like that too.

I did a double major in visual arts and printmaking but I was also simultaneously working with a physical theatre and performance company… we did absurd stuff… we had an industrial flamethrower, I don't where it came from, and we used to make big puppets. Once I dressed as a profiterole and danced through Sydney for a Fringe Festival [i.e., a festival that showcases works from small companies, generally of an experimental or unconventional nature] … So, it's been a kind of long-term passion.

So, you’ve been interested in installation work. Can you expand on that and how that influences your career now?

I guess it was an indication of my future in clowning… I did one [installation work] in a warehouse where I made a lot of recordings of news stories about children trapped in wells and disappearing in old buildings and then I ran around dressed like a small boy bouncing a ball and sort of darted behind everyone. It sort of worked… in retrospect.

I also made an installation about the Oklahoma bombing once where I filled the space with fertilizer and played the soundtrack for the musical Oklahoma over and over again. In retrospect, I don’t know if any of my ideas were particularly good.

How did your career develop after art school?

I kept working in Fringe theatre; I did Sydney Fringe, Melbourne Fringe, Canberra Fringe Festival for a few years with a company called Odd Productions. Eventually that petered out and then I was exhibiting as a printmaker and occasionally doing kind of random puppetry stuff, really weird stuff, but over time for a while it became less and less. I was working more as a chef in Sydney to pay my rent because it's very expensive and had less time for arts practice. It kind of become, for a while, I would say a career on hiatus.

As you say, rent is expensive. Now in your career, where do you find your main source of income from to survive as an artist?

I manage a library 4 days a week which I’m trying to get down to 3 days a week; it provides me with the ability to train, to buy props, and support my arts practice, and luckily, it's flexible enough that I'm able to be [at the circus] generally.

Is it a goal to have like your arts career to be how you make a living solely?

I think it used to be but honestly, I like the parts of my brain that my other job uses, I like the people that it forces me to interact with, the research work I do… All I wanted for a long time was a career only in the Arts but now…

I want to keep being an arts practitioner and it would be nice to earn enough to maybe only do something else 2 days a week but I don't think I'll ever stop that [other job] now.

It gives me ideas as well, the more different parts of the world I'm able to interact with, the more influences and ideas that I have coming in… I know for me when I was at art school and after art school and working in a small arts community, I got a much narrower focus, which I think can be a problem.

How do you feel about the commercial side of things in your career?

I did [have commercial goals] when I was at school, I had a level of success - my work went to Canada and interstate, I won a couple of prizes and I sold a bit of stuff. Then my work got more radical and I became disillusioned, I remember doing Professional Practice [course in university] and becoming more and more disillusioned with the way that the artworld essentially works and the way that it's necessary to sell yourself. The concept of having a CV and going through a terrifying job interview process, I know it's necessary if you want to sell work and survive, but it seemed so anathema to the process of creation that I really struggled with it.

You were described as having “radical left” political views in your online bio…could you tell us what they are and how they influence your career and performances?

It influences everything I do …my dad is a Maoist, I am not, but I was raised by socialists, when I was a kid, we would take car trips through the USSR to learn about socialism… my leanings would be Agrarian Socialism, and it influences everything I do - it influences the way I look at society, with the media. I accept that I live in a capitalist society, I'm a part of that and I try to work in it, but I also try to make art that is in line with my beliefs, so I avoid companies and things I don't agree with and shout at the TV a lot when it gets hard [laughs].

So, when you work with companies, how do these views affect your professional relationships?

Basically I won’t work with companies whose views are in opposition to mine.

For the most part, my personal presentation and the biographies you find online and in my work would probably scare most people away that would potentially be in opposition to me, so it’s not really an issue

How do you apply these views in your performance works?

I try to but I don't think when you do physical work that they are easy to portray… there’s some powerful works in the last couple of years that people have done with successfully combining beautiful circus work with politics but… I don't think I’ve found a way… yet.

So, you work with multiple different institutes, can you explain why you work with each of them?

I work with Vulcana, it's a community-based organisation, it's very supportive and I feel like it has enabled me to be braver in my arts practice. I work with the director Celia [White] and all other people here have helped me to really push what I do, work out how to self-edit, understand how to do better, not just kind of spew it all out onto the stage or onto a piece of paper.

I trained at Circa before that but that was purely kind of grunt work, lots of physical strength focus instead of performance.

Commonthread is our new company, so that's me and three friends working together and that's a new adventure… but other than that it's been mainly solo stuff… I do work [mainly] with another circus performer Elisa, we have an awful lot of ideas, in fact we have 3 shows worth of ideas, but… they’re currently unrealised.

I've worked with Ruckus Slam and… for the West End Festival, I’ve worked with many different companies but generally that's been applying as a solo artist, so these relationships have generally been fairly short lived.

How did your physical practice become centred on circus?

When I was a kid I did gymnastics and I also did a lot of summer holiday clowning kind of stuff in summer camps - you know, your parents go to work, so they send you somewhere every day for a week, those things. Every summer I did circus stuff in Canberra and then when I was 35, not long after I moved to Brisbane, I just kind of decided I wanted to join the circus. It seemed like a good way to get fit and for a few years it was kind of just that [fitness centred] before I started to drift back into actually wanting to perform and… actually seeing the correlation between that and the previous stuff that I've done, realising that physical theatre and circus maybe do have a link… it’s very interesting.

Did you find your previous main way of work [i.e., printmaking and painting] have influenced your performance works? Did these two arts practices converge or remain separate?

The content was always similar, there was always political content and always kind of social commentary but…

I think the access to printing presses disappeared after art school so I was painting for a while and printing become very difficult, but the performance definitely took over… so I still paint and print but it's become secondary to my physical practice

How do you think your arts practice has developed from art school until now? Are there any elements that remain the same or different?

I think everything I did was absurd and everything I do now is absurd …conceptually, I think concept-wise there's a timeline there. The interesting thing is I think I always start off with these grand political statements of these ideas about social justice and then I end up tied to a piece of elastic fighting with a box on the other side of the room, so I think actually what I realised over time is conceptually, I realised that I can work without having to have such a punch you in the face message perhaps. So that maybe the arts practice can stand alone without hiding behind some kind of theoretical framework.

Relating to the comment about the box… On the Commonthread website, you say you are in an “ongoing war with inanimate objects that seem intent on tripping you up” … Can you expand on that and how important this might be to your arts practice?

I did a piece last year where I crossed the room without touching the floor with 9 hand balance blocks and a red chair as the objects used to cross the floor with but not in a very logical way.

And then I’ve ended up trying to put a piece of furniture, that is the chair, together which is in a box …and now I'm working on a ballet on a spinning office chair… And I also put on an entire suitcase of clothes and wrestled with a beach ball last year for a show. So, the point I’m making is somehow I keep ending up with furniture.

What do you think is influencing that?

I suppose, honestly, at the core of it is the idea of the difficulty of everyday life.

Like, I frequently try to walk through doors and miss… it’s that kind of frustration that I feel, and that I'm assuming everyone else does though I could be wrong, with attempting to perform a seemingly simple task and how wrong it can go - that is to me the most difficult route to solve the simplest problem. Almost the idea that everything is acting against you but obviously to the outside observer it's your stupid decision making which is causing this problem. That’s what I like to showcase in my performances and its absurdity.

So that’s definitely a thread for your clowning performances, does that also tie into cabaret or other works you do?

Yes, so the next show that I'm working on, there will be furniture fights but I will also be doing acrobatic work with a lot of people on top of me… There will be aerial work and I'm also going to do a reverse striptease with 100 different pieces of Spanx underwear… So again, having an argument with a seemingly simple apparently helpful object. But with other elements of circus involved.

Could you tell us a bit more about your next show?

It’s called The Resting Bitchface, which is a show with Commonthread… so it hasn't officially been announced by the festival we are in yet, that happens hopefully next week and then we’ll start flying blimps over the city with our name on them [laughs].

Nowadays we don’t fly blimps anymore! Advertisement has become an Internet game. How have you managed over your career in the arts, in terms of having an online presence?

We opened a Hotmail account in 1995 for Odd Productions and we were cutting edge at the time… We used to go to Kinko’s and use the computer and send emails to three other people who had Hotmail accounts… So, there’s a whole period of my arts career which doesn't really exist online which is interesting.

[A lot of what I do isn’t documented] …I think with the timing of some of the stuff that I do… When you see it second hand it's very diluted, it loses something some of its power. It's very difficult to perform something to a camera the same as an audience.

Plus, if I’m getting ready for the show the last thing on my mind is that I need someone to document it and then afterwards I go, oh, that’s another undocumented work of mine…

It seems that a lot of your work is very ephemeral, how would you respond to that?

I think that goes back to our warehouse break ins… A lot of the time the work would stay there, it would get destroyed, things would get burnt down, you'd come back in and some kids have broken in and trashed everything before the opening… so it gave me this attitude to my work that you can do it and walk away.

My graduation piece – which I guess was the height of my arts education - resulted in a fire … post- Oklahoma bombing piece I became obsessed with terrorism …this was 1995 so nobody cared, I printed all these lithographs, all these matchboxes with different riot slogans, and historical terrorists…

I got several buckets of the matchboxes with slogans on them and put a single match in each one and everyone who entered the grad show got one match and a riot slogan… and eventually someone set fire to the six-foot-high pile of matches… The print lecturer [was not] supportive of my scheme, he didn't think that anyone would do that [set the fire], but somebody did. He also made like a masking tape kind of police line and stood behind it waving a fire extinguisher and no one was allowed into my installation.

Anyway, it came to the end of the week and I have one of each of the match books Ive printed in a folio somewhere and the rest just got swept up and put in the bin…

I understand that narrative is incredibly important to your work… Can you expand on that?

What I do, there must be a beginning, a middle, and an end… I have in some ways a very traditional outlook about physical comedy [what I’m working with now]. It must have a story or a Journey to engage with. And if there's not I try and build one into it in my head. Some of the clowning stuff I do in shows, there isn't a narrative, but I've created a narrative structure for myself because it makes it easier for me to perform.

With work like this, and with performance work, conservation is a major issue. A lot of value and commercial success is weighted on the ability to conserve your art and have it last. What do you think about that in relation to your practice?

I think it's great if your art can be conserved. My partner is an artist as well and his work honestly to me is more deserving of conserving, I don't think it's worth any more or less value than mine but it's different.

I reinvent something rather than conserve it… I feel very passionately about Conservation and archiving but not so much about my own stuff.

Some work lends itself to being conserved, and some does not. I think with my work, especially doing clowning. Say, when people are laughing and the timing is good and it's happening, the high that I get and the high they get from the experience, I can't capture that so if I can do it again, if I could improve it, that's great, but it can’t be conserved – in videos, it just looks weird and dry.

I know one of your more recent group shows received some negative reviews and feedback… How do you deal with this inevitable side of an arts career?

It’s necessary sometimes to take them on board. It can be hard when they’re negative and single your character out but it's also bad when there's a positive review and they don't single your character out. They haven't had a huge influence on me… but even with the bad ones, when they're written by people who see a lot of circus shows, a lot of theatre, sometimes even within that negativity they'll be points that can be worth considering.

Negative reviews are definitely a cause of anxiety, but what about the nerves before a performance? How do you deal with that?

When I am performing, I’ll be a little crazy in the hours before. I'll needlessly pack and unpack large bags full of objects I probably shouldn't have brought with me … and I do a lot of ab exercises which is actually useful for a circus performer but probably way too many.

A couple of years ago, we did a three-person clowning pole act on a 9-metre pole and we were in a 40-degree room in suits… and when we tested, the pole was moving and it was quite slippery, so I fell [in the test] … The following night, I had these weird dreams that I was in a cafe drinking coffee and the pole was always behind me, and that has happened with other shows.

The type of works you do are very physical and high-risk. Do you think you’ll still be doing it in 10 or 15 years? Do you expect there to be changes to your practice?

I think there will be modifications… But some women who train here are in their 50s, there was [a woman] who stopped last year at 63 because she found that she was losing muscle mass which comes with old age… but this is what I've done for years so there's affects with that and it'll change what I do.

But I can't imagine not doing it.

What other parts of the arts industry do you engage in, apart from being performer and artist?

I often work backstage… I did stage managing for a while many years ago, I've done special effects work and costume stuff and prop making. I still do as required on an ongoing basis because there is not a lot of money. I also support other people by volunteering in shows.

Would you consider that part of your arts practice or something separate?

Part of all arts practice, definitely. And I also think promoting and grant writing and festival applications and showreels and videos and all that stuff are part of arts practice.

Finally, as a summary… if you were to divide your arts practice up into segments, what would it look like?

It would be 70-80% rehearsing and training, 10% actually performing and the rest is administrative and logistical work.

Richard Bell Artist Biography

Richard Bell

Artist Biography

Richard Bell is a Queensland urban artist and political activist; openly discussing the history of race relations through video works of Scratch an aussie(Figure 2) and Uz vs THEM (Figure 3); Scientia E Metaphysica(Figure 4) and Bell's Theorem focuses on the state of aboriginal art industry and the art market; and in The Peckin Order (Figure 1), Bell appropriates the western pop art stylisation of Roy Lichtenstein to open dialogue regarding indigenous cultural appropriation;

Richard Bell's experiences during his youth in an openly racist australia and exposure to political activism in the 1970s are the roots of his arts practice. In 1953 indigenous people were not permitted to shop in the town Charleville (Queensland) where he was born. Living off the land, his family constructed a shack once they had collected enough discarded tin, and had previously raised bell for the first two years of his life in a tent (Allas 2008).

Bells mother moved his brother Marshall and himself from Queensland to the Northern territory in 1959. It is here that she began working at the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin. The original intention of the Retta Dixon Home was to assist the assimilation of aboriginal children into western culture and in the process undermined aboriginal groups. Between the 1860s and 1970s approximately 50,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander indigenous children were removed from their families and communities, these children are contemporarily known as the 'Stolen Generations' (Bambrick 2011).

At the age of 17 Bell's mother passed away and he was fostered by Nellie and Harold Leedie in Bowenville. It is interesting to note that Nellie Leedie is a relative of renowned Aboriginal activist “Sugar” Ray Robinson. He left school in year twelve to persue an apprenticeship in Dalby with Napier Brothers as a toolmaker, where he stayed for two years before heading fruit picking in tasmania and victoria (Allas 2008). He found himself in Redfern, Sydney later that same year in 1974 . It is here that he become associated with Redfern community and Black Panther-inspired politics of the 1970s which defined many of his peers indigenous identity (Harford 2013).

Bell relocated to Toowoombah after living in Sydney for ten years, then onto Moree with his partner, Liz Duncan. Now with a family of three children they moved to Brisbane to join his brother in creating artefacts, such as boomerangs, for the international tourist market which they sold from their shop 'Wiumulli' (1987 to 1990). Bell continued working as a 'tourist artist' till 1994, making postcard style prints that were mounted and shrink-wrapped and crafting boomerangs which were distributed throughout tourist retail outlets such as Queensland and New South Wales tourist information centres. During this time he also begain to be exhibited in 'fine art' exhibitions such as the show 'Balance 1990'.

Bells life took a major turn, his relationship broke down, and from 1998 until 2000 he lived the life of an iterant moving between Moree, Kempsey and Redfern. Whilst in Redfern during the 2000 Sydney Olympics Bell was invited to attend the art opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) of the late artist “Urban Dingo” by Tiriki Onus ( Lin Onus 's son). Prior to the exhibition opening Bell opened dialogue with Onus and Michael Eather regarding politics and art. “i was told that I could do and say anything and not get arrested” (Richard Bell 2014). This experience changed the course of Bell's artistic career and led to him revisiting his previous bodies of work.

Following the exhibition Bell was invited by Eather for the following year to work at the Fireworks Gallery. During his time there he feverishly experimented over twelve hours a day with different techniques and aesthetics which would aid the message he wished to deliver.

To further develop his practice he began researching contemporary art material, in particular the writings of Imants Tillers and other writings on Tillers. Inspired he reproduced Tillers’ work Untitled (1978), which is itself a reproduction of a Hans Heyson work, Summer (1909) which he stated that he “pulled the black-fulla act on Tillers” (Bell 2014) .

In 2002 Bell was given the opportunity to exhibit alongside the works of Emily Kngwarreye, Michael Nelson Jagamarra and Imants Tillers in the exhibition “Discomfort” at Fireworks Gallery. Along side the installation piece for this show he presented his renowned 12 page 'Bell's Theorem' (Allas 2008).

'Bell’s Theorem' is significant as its manifesto highlights some of the inequities in the Aboriginal Art market which have been long-standing. And notes that it is non-Aboriginal people, not the aboriginal people, who define and control the Aboriginal Art market.

'White people say what’s good. White people say what’s bad. White people buy it. White people sell it.’  Richard Bell 2007.

Since the emergence of the international aboriginal art market in the 1980s approximately 50% of australian artists are indigenous and are recognised as the largest producers of art per capita (Neale 2010). It is the belief of Bell that western culture is in the process of slowly digesting and commodifying aboriginal culture (Perkins 2014).

Within the Western art system, Australian Aboriginal art defines indigenous artists as either traditional, people living in the 'outback', or as 'Urban'. Traditional Aboriginal art refers to artworks that aesthetically empoly imagery and styles used in or relating to designs that engage with themes such as ancient traditions and ceremony. Bell adds that these works are fair game for appropriation. Aboriginal artists that live in built up residential areas such as towns and cities and express contemporary themes and engage with western media and style are described as 'Urban'. Bell notes that this term errodes cultural authenticity through the process of colonisation (Chapman 2006).

Speaking as a member of the Jiman Kamilaroi, Gurang Gurang and Kooma communities (MCA 2017).

Bell states, ‘ … Our culture was ripped from us and not much remains. Most of our languages have disappeared. We don’t have black or even dark skin. We don’t take shit from you.’

In 2003 the philosophical grounding in 'Bell's Theorum' led to a group of Brisbane-based Aboriginal artists, including Bell, Tony Albert, Gordon Hookey and Vernon Ah Kee, to form the radical collective proppaNOW (Perkins 2014).

'Bell's Theorum' accompanied his painting Scientia E Metaphysica which was entered into the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in 2003. The painting emblazoned with the words 'Aboriginal Art / It's A White thing', a bold statement expressing his opposition to the commercial use in advertising campaigns and tourist promotion of Aboriginal imagery. This conceptual exploration is additionally expressed in his appropriation of Western Modernism's painterly expression and iconography, styles and forms.

Scientia E Metaphysica aesthetically is an evolved Indigenous expression of colorful and gridded patterns reminiscent of Pop art. The issues in the sociopolitical history of black and white relations in Australia are expressed through a concise visual formula of black and white dripping and fields of the same colors on opposing sides of the painting. To futher the discourse of aboriginal art exploitation at the hands of art dealers and middle men, a left biased abstract red triangle is making reference to the 'triangle of discomfort', a concept intruduced in 'Bell's Theorum' (GCA 2017).

Scientia E Metaphysica went on to win the prestigious prize commonly known as the 'telstras'. Bell received national recognition from the contemporary art world as an artist who's practice carried a relevant and conceptually strong message and said it loudly (Allas 2008).

The dialogue between indigenous and white australians is continued in his video work Uz vs THEM .

“This artwork examines and challenges existing sociopolitical power structures. Depicting a cool, calm, collected black man against an angry white villain, it presents no apprent winner.” Richard Bell, 2007 (MCA 2017).

The two fighters training at a boxing gym in Richard Bell’s video work Uz vs Them provides the environment for the transposition of the political struggle between Aboriginal and white Australia. Bell takes on the role of the ‘magnificent black hero’ ready to ‘fight for Australia’, the other ‘an angry white dude’. The two men are training to defending opposing ideological stances.

The posturing of the two men in Uz and Them conveyed with a tongue-in-cheek approach, with Bell surrounded by a posse of gyrating white girls while he is wearing a suit.

Employing Bell's signature sarcasm and humour the verbal and physical sparring match between the two, while grappling with serious and confronting issues, never takes itself too seriously. By confronting white Australians with their position in the history of racial politics and drawing on popular culture references such as urban Indigenous music and vernacular language, Uz vs Them reverses power relations (MCA 2017).

Bell again uses video at an almost cinematic scale to reverse power relations in Scratch an aussie. Bell states:

''For a video installation I wanted to create stereotypical Australians, the beautiful, blonde Aryan-looking ones, and they also refer to the beach and the Cronulla riots, ...I put them in bikinis and budgie smugglers. Then I added two black men in intellectual positions, which you never see on TV.'' Richard Bell, 2013.

In this video work Bell casts himself in a dualistic role of therapist and patient. As the role of the therapist his patients are blond, gold swim-suited Anglo-Australian whom devulge trivial middle-class first world concerns, rants and racist jokes.

In the next sequence Bell is now patient to his long-time collaborator Gary Foley. It is not the belittlement or pain, but the abject absurdity of those who flaunt it that he expresses. He is laughing at, not with, his budgie-smuggling and bikini-clad blond subjects (Rule 2013). And in a strange twist, the golden bikini, reminiscent of the Surfers Paradise Meter Maids, now sits in the pantheon of Australian art, thanks to Richard Bell (Harford, 2013).

Bell argues that white Australia has not only appropriated Aboriginal land but also its traditional art. And uses it to strengthen Australia's tourism and image, all the while the government hides the poverty, lack of roads, education and schools, and the racist attitude that is part of aboriginal life (Branrick 2011). In response to this Bell engages with appropriation and manipulation of a range of western art genres in his art and paintings.

Roy Lichtenstein’s melodramatic comic strip parody has been appropriated in Bells 2007 paint The Peckin Order which is part of a series of paintings called Made Men. The original painting by Lichenstein, titled Shipboard Girl, depicts a blonde woman, eyes closed and red lips slightly parted, throwing her head back against the left side of the canvas. The blonde in Shipboard Girl is replicated in the The Pecking Order , Bell alters her skin tone to black, laying her to the right side of the canvas and has added a thought bubble, “Thank Christ I’m not Aboriginal!!!”, and in doing so is reversing expectations (Bambrick 2011).

Richard Bell’s artistic career now spans three decades and has garnered financial and critical success. His solo exhibitions include Richard Bell: Imagining Victory, Artspace, Sydney (2013); Imagining Victory; Embassy, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth (2014);  Uz vs Them, was a touring exhibition organised by the American Federation of the Arts, and toured to venues across North America throughout 2013; Exhibition titled, I am not sorry, was held at Location One, New York. He has also exhibited in numerous national and international group exhibitions. Bell's works are now held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canada, Ottawa, Canberra and state and regional galleries throughout Australia (MCA 2017).

Richard Bell's early life, in the openly racist australia of the 1950s, acts as a cornerstone to his art . His art is provocative, political and his persona is integral to his arts practice, making Bell inseparable from his art. Bell has appropriated the works of Roy Lichtenstein in The Peckin Order (Figure 4) to reverse expectations; discussed the history of race relations through video works of Scratch an aussie(Figure 2) and Uz vs THEM (Figure 1). Tho while critiquing the Aboriginal Art market in Scientia E Metaphysica(Figure 3) and Bell's Theorem , the art world has served Bell's political purposes well.

“you can get away with things...you can say virtually whatever you want...and you wont get arrested” Richard Bell 2014 (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 2014).

Figure 1. Richard Bell, The Peckin Order 2007, acrylic on canvas 150 x 150cm.

Source: Milani Gallery. Accessed 10 May.

http://www.milanigallery.com.au/artwork/peckin-order

Figure 2. Richard Bell, Scratch an aussie 2008, video, 10 minutes.

Source: QAGOMA. 2013. Accessed 10 May. http://tv.qagoma.qld.gov.au/2014/02/25/richard-bell-scratch-an-aussie/

Figure 3. Richard Bell, Uz vs THEM 2014, video, 2min 47s.

Source: MCA. Accessed 1O May. https://www.mca.com.au/collection/work/2008.43/

Figure 4. Richard Bell, Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell's Theorem) 2003, acrylic on canvas 240 x 540cm.

Source: Kooriweb, Accessed 10 May.

http://www.kooriweb.org/bell/aaiawt1.jpg

List of References

Allas, Tess. 2008. “Richard Bell“ Design & art australia online. Accessed 10 May 2017 Url:https://www.daao.org.au/bio/richard-bell/biography/

Bambrick, Gail. 2011. “The Art of Confrontation“ Tuffs Now. Accessed May 10 2017. url: http://now.tufts.edu/articles/art-confrontation

Bell, Richard. 2002. “Bell's Theorem: ABORIGINAL ART-It's a white thing!“ kooriweb Accessed 10 May 2017. url:http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/great/art/bell.html

Chapman, Katrina. 2006. “Positioning urban Aboriginal art in the Australian Indigenous art market“ Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management. 4(2): 219:228. url: http://apjacm.arts.unimelb.edu.au/article/view/47/38

GCA. 2017. “Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell’s Theorem), 2003“ The Global Contemporary Art World After 1989. Accessed 10 May 2017. url: http://www.global-contemporary.de/en/artists/95-richard-bell

Harford, Sonia. 2013. “Sinister truth behind the bikini“ The Sydney Morning Herald. Accessed May 10 2017. url:http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/sinister-truth-behind-the-bikini-20130205-2dwdb.html

Neale, Margo. 2010. “Learning to be a proppa“ Aboriginal artists collective ProppaNOW“ Artlink 30(1). url:https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/3359/learning-to-be-proppa-aboriginal-artists-collecti/

Perkins, Hetti. 2014. Tradition Today : Indigenous Art in Australia from the Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales

Rule, Dan. 2013. “Agitation, Ediquette and Identity: THE ART OF RICHARD BELL“ . Broadsheet. Url: https://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/art-and-design/article/agitation-etiquette-and-identity-art-richard-bell

stateliraryqld 2011. Richard Bell Digital Story (video)(Youtube:State Library of Queensland. 2011) url:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKB1BezX1CU

MCA. 2017. “Richard Bell: Uz vs Them 2006“ Museum of Contemporary Art. Accessed 10 May 2017. url: https://www.mca.com.au/collection/work/2008.43/

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 2014. Appropriation, Modernism and Indigenous Art in the Contemporary Field (video)( Youtube: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. 2014 ) url:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IarSaWxwjdE