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Richard Bell: ME (2004)

Richard Bell was born into the Kamilaroi tribe in Charleville, Queensland, Australia. As a young man in the 1970s he became an activist for aboriginal self-determination. He willingly admits that his art background is rooted in ‘tourist art’. He only decided to step over the line into ‘fine art’ when a friend observed that his political messages could reach a wider audience through art than by participating in protest marches. He has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for more than 25 years and his work, which includes paintings, video art, installations, text and performance art is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. 

ME, Bell’s self-portrait, chosen for the current exhibit for its bold colors, seems, in style, to be an amalgam of Van Gogh, Warhol and Lichtenstein. It was painted specifically as a 2015 Archibald Prize entry. As Bell tells it, he chose himself for the subject because he didn’t believe that anyone else would trust him to paint their portrait. 

Even though his 2004 Archibald winner was an abstract, textual piece, as is much of his recent work, Bell decided to produce a figurative and realistic portrait in 2015. In an interview with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, he conceded that, “Making this painting was difficult. The circumstances (he was working in a make-shift studio), the deadline and the process all conspired against me.” But, with a note of satisfaction, he described the result as “defiant, assertive, pensive, imploring, confident, dismissively cool and ambivalent.” Prize judges seemed to agree, choosing the painting as one of the 47 finalists from among 832 entries.

(This piece is proposed for inclusion in A Splash of Local Color: Vibrant Hues at Work in Contemporary Indigenous Art.)

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