Much like with when I looked at The Witch Of Kings Cross back in 2021, this is a documentary about an Aussie artist that I didn’t know anything about beforehand. I consider myself an ally of the First Peoples of this country, and have (and will continue to) voice such opinions in my work, but I freely admit that there are sizeable gaps in my knowledge of the history. Specifically, when it comes to Black art. So, when it came time for me to draft up a list of films I wanted to make sure I got to before the end of the year, I knew that I had to include this look at one of Australia’s most prominent Black artists: Richard Bell. And while it gave me a better impression of who Richie is and his place within Australian art history, it also felt spread a bit thin.
Along with depicting Richard’s life story and his work, director Larissa Behrendt also tries to give a history lesson on Black activism surrounding and succeeding the 1967 referendum that allowed for Indigenous Australians to be counted among the general population, along with how U.S. Black activism and the Black Panthers influenced the movement over here. The pacing here and especially the editing from Jane Usher can feel a bit jarring going from topic to topic, and at around 80 minutes, not enough time is really given to each subject to do them justice. At times, it feels like the film is struggling between a presentation of Richard Bell as an artist specifically, or the entirety of Australian art and activism history, to the point where I was convinced at one point that the film had just stopped focusing on Richard.
When focusing just on Richard, though, is when the film ends up making its strongest points, and most of them about Richard himself. While the larger picture never quite manages to convey the ‘Richie/Richard’ dichotomy it teases early on, he’s still comes through strongly as a provocative, creative, and sociable piss-taker (literally at a couple points). His approach to art, described as him decolonising or 'Indigenising' White art spaces, is as informed by race history as it is by art history. Some of his art involves painting famous (and not-famous-enough) photographs, like the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, while other works react to stolen Indigenous land by in turn stealing from White artists, like what I’m calling his ‘Thank Christ’ series that are based on Roy Lichtenstein pop art, or his drip technique paintings based on Jackson Pollock. Seems only fitting since, as the doco points out, both artists stole those same aesthetics from others.
However, for as intriguing as it is to learn more about the art traditions of my home country, a large part of me wishes I had caught this closer to January when it first became available for public viewing (not counting its film festival debut in October of last year). Because when Richard said “There is no hope, unless we make it happen”, it made me think about how 2023 has turned out in regards to Indigenous recognition. How the attempt to have an official federal Voice for Indigenous Australians in Parliament, however depressing it is that the outcome was not even remotely surprising, failed to get the votes. How I witnessed months of people arguing through ignorance, because searching for publicly available documents takes more effort than opening Twitter (or X as it cutely thinks it’s called now). How the same people I watched openly engage in blood quantum “your skin is paler than how I imagine an Indigenous person looks, therefore I, a White person, don’t count you as Indigenous” bullshit were the ones who, when the Voice didn’t go through, declared it a win against racism.
But as with any political setback, just because the public has stopped treating it as their pet cause/target doesn’t mean the work has stopped. Art is an effective way of propagating political thought and action, and as Richie himself explains, sharing ideas through pictures can compensate a potential deficiency in reading and writing literacy (part of a larger issue concerning education standards for Indigenous communities as set by White politicians). I may be bummed out (to put it mildly) about my own experience with this film in context to what in the actual fuck happened this year, but that just makes me more thankful that people like Richard Bell are out there. Still pissing off the right people, still drawing eyes to the bigger problems, and still carrying that subversive fire that a lot of great artists share.
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