Gordon Bennett
Big romantic painting (apotheosis of Captain Cook), 1993
Much of Gordon Bennett's work addresses his stated ambition ‘to reinstate a sense of Aboriginal people within the culturally dominant system of representation as human beings, rather than as a visual sign that signifies the "primitive", the "noble savage", or some other European construct associated with black skin’. His Big romantic painting (The apotheosis of Captain Cook) of 1993, employs iconography of American abstract expressionism and the dots of Papunya Tula painting, intertwined with Western systems of realistic depiction, to address the dominant impact of Western perspectives on the land and First Peoples of Australia.
- Artist / Maker
- Gordon Bennett (1955–2014)
- Creation Date
- 1993
- Place created
- Australia - Melbourne
- Collection
- University Art Collection
- Subjects
- Art and Design - Paintings
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint on canvas
- Dimensions
(H x W x D) - 182 x 400.5 x 4 cm
- Credit line
- The University of Melbourne Art Collection. Purchased from the artist 1993, following the artist's term as artist-in-residence at the University of Melbourne
- Accession number
- 1993.0035.000.000
- Copyright
- © The Estate of Gordon Bennett Request Access
