RICHARD BELL (B. 1953)
A 10% Goods and Services tax (G.S.T) will be charg… Read more
RICHARD BELL (B. 1953)

NONE OF 'EM

Details
RICHARD BELL (B. 1953)
NONE OF 'EM
panel one: inscribed with title 'None of 'em', with date and Fireworks Gallery number '1993/FW5971' (on the reverse); panel two and three: with artists name and title 'None of 'em/Richard Bell' (on the reverse of each)
synthetic polymer paint and collage on canvas
121.5 x 91.5 cm
Provenance
Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Liverpool, Bluecoat Gallery London, South London Gallery, Leicester, City Gallery & then touring Australia, True Colours: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Artists Raise the Flag, 1995
Special notice
A 10% Goods and Services tax (G.S.T) will be charged on the Buyer's Premium on all lots in this sale.

Lot Essay

While to a contemporary audience the claims of the didactic rhetoric collaged onto the surface of this work are obviously absurd, Bell's juxtaposition of the text with black and white photographs depicting enslaved Aborigines or pictured uncomfortably in Western clothes places the text in an historical context in which this rhetoric would have once held the status of an inviolable truth. The surface of the work is in itself an inscribed and wounded surface, bearing additions, incisions, stains and the traces of selective history.

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