Richard Bell Essay

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[DOCUMENT TITLE] [Document subtitle] Richard Bell is an Aboriginal artist from the Gamilaraay people that originally come from North West New South Wales and South West Queensland Bell was born in Charleville, Queensland in 1953. He is a leading artist that established an arts protest movement, alongside other urban Indigenous artists whose work initially provided a means of expression during the lead up to the 1988 bi-centenary of colonial occupation. As an artist, Bell is based in Brisbane, Queensland and his work challenges stereotypes and perceived notions of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ Indigenous art. He also addresses contemporary issues such as Indigenous disadvantage, religion, racism, art & politics. Bell states that This paper …show more content…

The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards is Australia's longest running Indigenous art award (Telstra Award, 2016). The award was established in 1984 by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin. It is open to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists working in all forms and mediums. The Telstra Award is a cash prize of $50000. As an Aboriginal Artist, Bell used his artwork ‘Aboriginal Art – It’s a White Thing’ to project his perspective on key issues important to many Indigenous artists. These issues include the notion of appropriation and control of Aboriginal arts and culture, the commercial exploitation of Aboriginal art and artists as a colonial process and the ethnocentric ideas that characterise Aboriginal art as artefacts rather than contemporary work from an Australian Indigenous arts movement (Bell, 2002). Bell, (2002) suggests that ‘Aboriginal Art is a "movement" and as yet has not graduated to ‘ISM’ status by being "named”. Rather, Aboriginal culture and art is predominately portrayed as a collective expression of an objectified group of people that reflect colonial stereotypes of an unchanging culture caught in the ethnographic present (Hastrup, 1990). Aboriginal art is a product and expression of a living dynamic culture that reflects the accumulated knowledge, traditions, experiences, values, history, lifeways, kinship, country and economics of thousands of generations of Indigenous Australians (McCulloch,

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