Appropriation - Gordon Bennett and Vincent Van Gogh

The contemporary practice of using appropriation doesn't limit originality or lesson the unique identity of the artist and importance/value of the artwork. Gordon Bennett challenges us to re-interpret history as he adds his own meaning and own story to his artworks. His art explores and reflects his personal experiences and his struggle for identity that ensued from the repression and denial of his Aboriginal heritage. He uses self-portraits to question stereotypes and labelling and he uses this form of representation to also look at issues of identity on a national scale. His art attempts to remove the obstacles that interfere with a positive development of self and he re-contextualises existing images to challenge the viewer to question and see alternative perspectives. Bennett is influenced by many artists and traditions to create a new language and new way of reading images. He is interested in the way language and images construct identity and history, and the way this language controls and creates meaning. Fundamentally, he deconstructs history to question the 'truth' of the past.

Bennett's interest in adopting a strategy of intervention disturbance in the field of representation is manifest in many different ways in his art. He uses appropriation to present audiences with new ways of viewing and understanding the images and narratives that have shaped the nation's history and culture. Bennett appropriates the ideas of Spanish artist Francisco Goya and Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in his painting Outsider (1988). Goya uses the 'grotesque' as a means of disrupting conventional ways of seeing and understanding and to unsettle the viewer. Goya's work, Disaster of war series, uses the power of the grotesque which shows graphic images of mutilated and tortured bodies. Bennett's use of grotesque is apparent in Outsider is shown in the decapitated body of the aboriginal. Bennett also makes reference to two paintings by Van Gogh, Vincent's bedroom in Arles (1888) and Starry Night (1889). Bennett shows a decapitated Aboriginal figure standing over Vincent van Gogh's bed, with red paint streaming skywards to join with the vortex of Vincent's starry night. In Bennett's Outsider the intensity and energy associated with van Gogh's expressive brushstrokes and vivid colour contrasts are powerfully explosive. Van Gogh's original bedroom evokes feelings of harmony and peace whereas Bennett's painting of the bedroom becomes the site of violent conflict that involves complex and intersecting personal and cultural histories. Bennett's painting isn't calm and has a lot happening. The figure of the headless Aboriginal man has an animated, spectre-like presence. A gush of blood red paint shoots into the sky from his body and there are bloody handprints stamped across the walls. Together this imagery alludes to the violent suppression of Indigenous people and culture in the nation's history. Van Gogh's Starry night inspire the circular forms in the sky and they absorb the flow of 'blood' and recall the symbols often used in Aboriginal 'dot painting' to represent significant sites. The pale, marble-like sculpted heads on the bed are similar to those of the Classical art and learning that has been privileged in the Western culture, including those associated with Indigenous cultures. With closed eyes,