Myhren Gallery, University of Denver, Colorado (2012), University of Kentucky, Lexington and Tufts University Art Gallery, Boston (2011) and Positivity, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2006). Selected solo exhibitions include Richard Bell: Imagining Victory, Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo (2015) Embassy, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth (2014) Imagining Victory, Artspace, Sydney (2013) Lessons on Etiquette and Manners, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2013) and Uz vs Them, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington (2013) Victoria H. At times totemic in scale, the paintings demanded our attention, and conveyed, in no uncertain terms, some strategies toward a more equitable cultural realignment. The exhibition could potentially be interpreted as more mature, indeed, more serious in its narrative delivery than other works, unhinged from satire, yet still with the same anger that is the pervasive thrust of his work both as an activist and artist.

Many of the works within Dredging up the Past are imbued with the same irreverent humour Bell is renowned for, yet there is also evident a more direct sense of political urgency disentangled from his typical subversive wit. Employing the visual tropes of canonical painting of the twentieth century, Bell appropriates all that is familiar within the modern Western tradition of art, yet subverts the vernacular to raise crucial issues around unceded Aboriginal sovereignty. Dredging up the Past was the most recent body of paintings by leading Australian artist Richard Bell and continued his ongoing campaign of focusing attention upon the disempowerment of Indigenous Australian peoples.

Dredging up the past