Richard Bell- Liberation Artist- 2016 Australia Council Visual Artist Award

Richard Bell has today been announced the recipient of the 2016 Visual Artist Award by the Australia Council of the Arts. 

Image copyright © Ruth Skilbeck, 2016 'Richard Bell- Liberation Artist' 
Digital inkjet print, 102 x 76 cm

Richard Bell, a self-described propagandist and liberation artist, achieved international recognition for his paintings and media art that challenge the ongoing social injustices against Aboriginal Australians, including colonial ethnographic categorizations of Aboriginal art, and lingering stereotypes in the contemporary art world.

     “The paternalism and social engineering of the old colonial regimes are cynically matched and even surpassed by the new postcolonial ones.”

    Quote from ‘Bell’s Theorem: Aboriginal Art- It’s a White Thing’, Richard Bell, 2006

Ruth Skilbeck, Richard Bell- Liberation Artist, 2016, Digital inkjet print, 102 x 76 cm