Gordon Bennett: Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett is an unmissable exhibition honouring the art and legacy of one of Australia’s most influential contemporary artists (1955–2014), showing at the Gallery of Modern Art from November 7 to March 21, 2021.

Celebrating the Queensland-based artist’s globally-recognised contribution to contemporary art, Unfinished Business features almost 200 of Bennett's artworks including his most important and admired works, and many works which have rarely, if ever, been exhibited.

Drawn from private and public collections, as well as the artist's estate, this is the first large-scale exhibition of Bennett's work in over a decade, ranging from installation and sculptural assemblage to painting, drawing, video and ceramics.

Highlights of the exhibition include his early compositions Diptych 1987, the installations Psycho(d)rama 1990 and Culture bag 1992, the welt and mirror series, and paintings and drawings driven by Bennett’s fascination with and perceived shared experience with the African-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Born and raised as a European Australian in central Queensland, Bennett grew up knowing his father was a migrant of Anglo-Celtic descent. He was a young teenager when he discovered his birth mother was Indigenous. This revelation of a dual identity was a life-changing event for Bennett, especially in the context of 1960s Australia; a decade in which the country grappled with its history.

Bennett commenced full-time study at Brisbane’s Queensland College of Art at the age of 30. From that time on, he drew on contemporary post-colonial theory to explore the workings of society, and to reflect on racial violence and social and cultural inequities he observed at home and internationally.

Bennett's prolific body of work continues to encourage audiences to question mainstream historical accounts, established fields of knowledge, and the ways we think about the world including Australia’s colonial past and post-colonial present.

Nice to know - Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett is accompanied by a 200 page, full-colour publication available at GOMA's online store.   

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