Publishing

Richard Bell: Positivity

Richard Bell will always be remembered for collecting his 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in a T-shirt explaining 'White girls can't hump'. Bell's project first took shape in the early 1990s when two aspects of his life became intertwined: painting boomerangs and 'pretty pictures' for the tourist market and political activism. Combining pleasing generic Aboriginal imagery with rude vernacular slogans, his agit-pop work frustrated white engagement and romantic identification. This idea evolved into his recent Roy Lichtenstein parodies, which explore the contradictions of the doomed 'love affair' between white people and Aboriginals. This time last year the IMA presented Positivity, a mini-survey of Bell's work. Now we follow up with a monograph on his work featuring new texts by Gary Foley, Morgan Thomas, Franca Tamisari and Rex Butler; Bell's own treatise, 'Bell's Theorem'; and an anthology of past writings. Supported by QIAMEA. / $30