Edited by Angela Goddard and Tim Riley Walsh A co-publication from Power Publicationsand Griffith University Art Museum Winner of AAANZ Best Artist-led publication Paperback with dust jacketRRP $45.00 AUDISBN 978-0-909952-01-366 images, including colour plates216 pp297 x 210 mm890 gms Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings is the first publication to survey the writing practice of the late Gordon Bennett (1955–2014), giving vital insight into one of Australia’s most important contemporary artists in his own words. Bringing together nearly forty published and unpublished essays, artist’s statements, letters, and interviews from across Bennett’s nearly thirty-year career, Selected Writings profiles the importance of the written word within his art and broader intellectual practice. Through its focus on Bennett’s written voice, which shifts between scholarly debate, political argument and personal reflections, this publication reveals Bennett considered art and life to be just as entangled as words and images. Edited by Angela Goddard and Tim Riley Walsh, Selected Writings is co-published by Power Publications, Sydney, and Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. The book also provides glimpses into Bennett’s personal archive via the reproduction of previously unseen notebooks, correspondence, sketches, preparatory compositions, and more. Offering new knowledge of his creative process, intellectual and artistic influences and professional relationships, this project amplifies Bennett’s already significant contribution to subjects of race and identity in national and global contexts, as well as reaffirming his centrality to postcolonial discourse in the twenty-first century. Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings is impressive for its robust and timely approach to the archive of Australian art. Diligently researched, Selected Writings brings together an array of Bennett’s published and unpublished writings, statements and interviews, as well as providing glimpses into his personal notebooks, letters and sketches. Thoughtfully structured in four parts – In his own words; In response; In conversation; and On reflection – the editors, Goddard and Reilly, bring to the fore Bennett’s astute analysis of his art, and more broadly Australian art’s dialogues with contemporary politics and colonial aftermaths. The editors’ own texts/essays helpfully introduce and frame Bennett’s writings via-a-vis Australian art discourse, illuminating their value for a new generation of researchers, artists and curators. Selected Writings is an accessible and valuable resource for a wide range of readers invested in understanding the legacies and futures of Bennett’s art. The publication is elegantly designed, and restrains its use of imagery to effectively emphasise the text, or Bennett’s own words. Overall, the publication represents an important methodological approach for Australian art history: engaging with the archive to foreground the voices of significant artists who can help expand the limits of the discipline and forge new vocabularies, epistemologies and frameworks.— Dr Verónica Tello and Bryony Naiby, Judges of 2021 AAANZ Best Artist-led Publication Prize CONTENTS Foreword / 9Angela Goddard Part One: In his own words Introduction: Essays and Artist’s Statements / 15Angela Goddard and Tim Riley Walsh The Coming of the Light / 16Balance, exhibition catalogue, 1990 The Persistence of Language / 16unpublished, 1990 Re-Writing History / 18Southern Crossings/Empty Land: In the Australian Image, exhibition catalogue, 1992 Artist’s Statement / 25Southern Crossings/Empty Land: In the Australian Image, exhibition catalogue, 1992 Aesthetics and Iconography: An Artist’s Approach / 27Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, exhibition catalogue, 1993 A Non-Apology / 33unpublished, 1993 ‘Bounty Hunter’ Series / 34unpublished, 1996 The Manifest Toe / 37The Art of Gordon Bennett, 1996 Eddie Mabo (after Mike Kelley’s Booth’s Puddle, 1985, from Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile) / 59unpublished, 1996 Home Décor (Preston + De Stijl = Citizen) / 61unpublished, undated (c. 1996) Cloud Gazing / 63Breaking Borders, exhibition catalogue, 1997 Australian Icons: Notes on Perception / 65Double Vision: Art Histories and Colonial Histories in the Pacific, 1999 Part Two: In response Introduction: Letters / 71Angela Goddard and Tim Riley Walsh Letter to Judith Hugo, 1990 / 72 Self Portrait, 1991 / 73 Letter to Gary Lee, 1991 / 73 Letters to Nadine Amadio, 1992 / 75 Letters to Eugene Carchesio, 1992 / 82 On Double Standards: An ‘Other Perspective’ / 85Art Monthly Australia 47, 1992 Letter to Michael O’Ferrall, 1992 / 86 Letter to Peter Bellas, 1993 / 87 Letters from ‘Home Sweet Home’ Series, 1993–94 / 88 Letter to John Laws, 1994 / 90 Critiquing the Critic: An Open Letter to Sue Smith (Art Critic for The Courier Mail), 1995 / 92 Letter to Lucienne Fontannaz, 1995 / 96 Letter to Rose Johnson, 1996 / 97 Letter to Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1998 / 101Gordon Bennett exhibition pamphlet, Sherman Galleries, published 1999 Letter to Ian McLean, 2001 / 102 Letter to Ihor Holubizky, 2006 / 107 Part Three: In conversation Introduction: Interviews / 113Angela Goddard and Tim Riley Walsh Pat Hoffie, Urban Aboriginal Art: Pat Hoffie Talks with Gordon Bennett / 114Painting: Traces of Place, 1989 Bob Lingard, A Kind of History Painting / 120Tension 17, 1989 Anne Kirker, Gordon Bennett: Expressions of Constructed Identity / 123Artlink 10, no. 1 & 2, 1990 Christopher Chapman, A Discussion with Gordon Bennett: The Inland Sea / 126Artonview 1, 1995 Chris McAuliffe, Interview with Gordon Bennett / 129What Is Appropriation? An Anthology of Writings on Australian Art in the 1980s and 1990s, 1996 Bill Wright, Conversation: Bill Wright Talks to Gordon Bennett / 135Gordon Bennett, exhibition catalogue, 2007 Colour plates / 143 Part Four: On reflection Uncertain Words: The Writing of Gordon Bennett / 187Tim Riley Walsh Index / 204 Artist’s bibliography / 209 Additional plates / 216
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