Richard Bell lecture at UVa next week!
Wednesday, April 21, 6:00pm
Aboriginal artist Richard Bell will deliver the John W. and Maria T. Kluge Distinguished Lecture in Arts and Humanities at the University of Virginia on April 21. The lecture, titled Talking the Talk, will be held in Campbell Hall Room 153 followed by a reception with the artist at UVa Art Museum.
Bell describes himself as “more an activist than an artist” and he is at his most effective when confronting issues such as racism in Australian culture. In Bell’s recent film, Scratch an Aussie, he portrays a black Sigmund Freud psychoanalyzing a cadre of blonde Australian teenagers. They are oblivious both to their overt racism, highlighted in a word-association scene in which the word “genocide” draws a blank, and to Bell’s exploitation; charging $1000 an hour he has no intention of curing them. If this blindness is interpreted as commentary on the current state of reconciliation with Indigenous Australians, Bell’s humor and considerable charisma make the bitter pill easier to swallow.
Richard Bell was born in 1953 in Charleville, Queensland, and is a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities. He is represented in major collections in Australia and is internationally recognized through numerous exhibitions, including the European touring exhibition Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, 1993; Culture Warriors, The National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia, 2007; the 9th and 16th Sydney Biennales, 1992 and 2008. His work was the subject of the survey exhibition Positivity, presented by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in 2006. A past member of the Campfire group, Bell is a founding member of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal artists collective. He is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
The lecture is open to the public. Reservations for the reception may be made by calling 434.244.0234. Free parking is available after 5 pm in Culbreth Parking Garage.
