Well Gordon Bennett if it isnt Gordon Bennett !

I bused into the city today to go to my fist exhibition (LIVE) at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. The city was sparkling - it's the only way I can describe it. Blue skies, uninterrupted, except for the high rises, set against the most sensational blossoming trees. I caught my first glimpse of a flowering Poinsiania and I cant wait for ours to flower. The Public Art spoke to me as did the cranes in the distance almost looking arty themselves!

An Illawara Flame tree about to combust with Beauty 

The first flowers of the Poinsiania appearing on this tree with the city as a backdrop. 

The exhibition is a major collection of the works of Gordon Bennett. If you want to see it go to: 

https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/unfinished-business-the-art-of-gordon-bennett

Gordon's father was white and his mother Aboriginal. He was born in Monto in Queensland and spent much of his life here in Brisbane until his early death at the age of 58. 

He challenged racial stereotypes and national identities, creating alternative histories and ideas as he understood them, and he focused very strongly on Australian colonial and post colonial times and perceptions. It is a huge exhibition and in many ways quite confronting but I will only share with you some of his quotes and a couple of his works which speak amply. 

This is entitled Myth of the Western Man - White Man's Burden with dates from 1788 first landing to 1992 the Mabo case overturning the concept of Terra Nullius. Each date has a significance historically often as a massacre or injustice against indigenous people. 

His Father and Mother. 

We have so much we can learn and extrapolate on what has gone before. There is no better time then to consider how we relate to these events then the here and now. I start from Cyprus and Famagusta and the history of the city which we are in danger of losing for ever. I go to Africa and the many wars fought with countless lives lost (I have been reading Alexandra Fuller non stop and all her many accounts of growing up in Africa) and I end up in modern day Australia which is learning and growing and adapting to better images of how history may and indeed should be differently perceived and artists like Gordon open our eyes to it all.