Elder Wing of Australian Art: Self-Guided Audio Tour
Work 15 of 15

Before he became an artist, Richard Bell was an activist for Aboriginal rights. And through his art, he remains one.

A member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities, Bell experienced official neglect and mistreatment first-hand while growing up in Queensland in the 1950s and ’60s. He lived for part of his early life in a tent and then a tin shack, and as a young teen he had watched as his home on an Aboriginal reserve was bulldozed by the government. In the 1970s and ’80s, he became involved in Aboriginal land rights and legal issues, before he turned to art as a powerful means of conveying his activist ideas.

Bell is a self-taught artist who works across diverse mediums. He treads a path between wry wit and brutal honesty, challenging his audience with incisive and provocative works that tackle deep-rooted issues of racism, colonisation, Aboriginal sovereignty and social justice. In his paintings, he frequently appropriates imagery from art or history and incorporates text to convey his message – as we see in this work.

The sign says it is based on a 1968 newspaper photograph of a protest march in Darwin, against legislation intended to allow the sale of Aboriginal reserve land in the Northern Territory. The protesters – activists like Bell himself – were supporters of the ‘Wave Hill walk-off’, a long-running campaign by the Gurindji people for equal pay and land justice, which was a pivotal episode in the modern land-rights movement. Bell has subtly textured the white surface of their placard to resemble a Western Desert painting, a reworking that emphasises the Aboriginal protesters’ enduring cultural connection to their land.

Bell’s use of high-key colours transforms the historical black-and-white image into a striking work of art. Importantly, this transfiguration both celebrates a notable moment from the past while also dehistoricising it – presenting the protesters’ message from 1968 as a timeless demand for Aboriginal voices to be heard in political and social debates.

That message had particular resonance when Bell painted this work in 2017, around the time of the declaration of the Uluru Statement from the Heart – a call from Aboriginal people nationwide for constitutional recognition and a ‘First Nations Voice’ to Federal Parliament.