Title
Pay the rent
2009
Artist
Richard Bell
Australia
1953 –
Language groups: Kamilaroi, Northern Riverine region, Kooma, Northern Riverine region, Jiman, North-east region, Goreng Goreng, North-east region
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Details
- Place where the work was made
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Brisbane
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Queensland
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Australia
- Cultural origin
- Kamilaroi/Kooma, Northern Riverine region; Jiman/Goreng Goreng, Northeast region
- Date
- 2009
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- 240.0 x 360.0 cm
- Credit
- Purchased 2010
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 203.2010.a-b
- Copyright
- © Richard Bell, courtesy Milani Gallery, Brisbane
- Artist information
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Richard Bell
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
Richard Bell is recognised for his self-titled ’liberation art’ which explores the many fronts of Australian racism. In line with his 2002 manifesto 'Bell’s theorem', Bell dwells on the commercial industries that have developed around Aboriginal art. He argues that Aboriginal art is a commodity slowly being subsumed by white Australia, and white majorities around the globe, with its forms and subjects being used to further categorise and assimilate Aboriginal people.
In 'Pay the rent' Bell reinvents a land rights protest placard as a work of fine art, demanding that the Aboriginal population be paid all that would be owed in rent since the colonial invasion of 1788. The slogan was popular in 1972, when land rights protests in Canberra culminated into what became known as the Aboriginal Embassy. This act of protest is a continuing preoccupation of Bell’s, informing later works such as 'Embassy 2013' – ongoing, which consists of a large military-style canvas tent surrounded by painted placards with slogans such as ’White Invaders You are Living on Stolen Land’ and ’...We Wuz Robbed
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Places
Where the work was made
Brisbane
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Exhibition history
Shown in 6 exhibitions
Richard Bell: I am not sorry (2009), Location One, New York, 09 Oct 2009–25 Nov 2009
Home: Aboriginal Art from NSW, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 09 Jun 2012–02 Dec 2012
See you at the barricades, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 May 2015–29 Nov 2015
Signs and symbols to live by, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 16 Jun 2016–19 Mar 2017
Richard Bell: you can go now, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, 04 Jun 2021–07 Nov 2021
20th-Century galleries, lower level 1 (rehang), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Aug 2022–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Hetti Perkins, Art + soul: a journey into the world of Aboriginal art, 'Bitter + Sweet', pg. 174-239, Carlton, 2010, 208-209 (colour illus.), 210, 211, 212, 213, 268.
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Macushla Robinson, See you at the barricades, 'An introduction', pg.2-10, Sydney, 2015, 5, 14-5 (colour illus.), 46.
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