Every documentarian exploring the life of a visual artist should consider how that artist’s work can inform the aesthetic of their production. If successfully broached, this challenge – as Larissa Behrendt demonstrates in her fabulously festive portrait of Richard Bell – becomes a blessing, infusing the work with the flavour and flair of its subject.
In the case of Bell – a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities – it’s not just about indulging his art but his activism, both inseparably entwined, intrinsic to his story and cultural imprint. The necessarily pointy and polemical You Can Go Now captures a man who, according to one interviewee, “knows no boundaries”, “is gangster as fuck” and “unashamedly, unapologetically black”.
The film – named for Bell’s 2017 artwork Immigration Policy, which painted the words “YOU CAN GO NOW!” over a map of Australia – is exuberantly splashy from the get-go, spraying light and energy like a firecracker in the night. Providing a framing device uniquely tied to the subject, Behrendt sprinkles in short excerpts, performed by Bell himself, from his blistering manifesto-like 2002 essay Bell’s Theorem, adding a cerebral undercurrent while retaining the film’s party-like vibes.
Watching it feels a little like attending a university soiree, where everybody’s high-spirited and having a blast but always a heartbeat away from a spiky conversation, a contest of ideas, a provocative opinion. Bell, for instance, believes Aboriginal art has become “a commodity … a product of the times”, arguing “there is no Aboriginal art industry”, only “an industry that caters for Aboriginal art”, managed mostly by non-Aboriginal people.
While it’s impossible to convey the essence of anybody’s character in short soundbites, it’s particularly telling to hear interviewees um and ah about how to explain Bell, clearly a person who can’t be predicted or pigeonholed. Gallerist Josh Milani evocatively summarises the subject’s penchant for turning other people’s artistic creations on their heads, commenting that Bell inserts himself into complex histories “like a thief in the night and takes what he needs” then “redeploys it in his own paintings”. One striking example of Bell appropriating another’s work is his painting The Peckin’ Order, 2007, which repurposes Roy Lichtenstein pop art into scathing satire.
Interviewees also address the question of how to explain Bell via Jekyll and Hyde-ish analogy. There’s Richard and then there’s Richie, they explain, the former a man “grounded in his art and his country” and the latter flamboyant and attention-seeking: a rabble-rouser, provocateur, instigator. It’s presumably Richie who, when his bid to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale was rejected, went ahead and gate-crashed the event in a most spectacular way – creating a replica of Australia’s official Biennale pavilion, wrapping it in chains then driving it around the city on a motorised barge.
Bell recounts that he was 13 years old during the 1967 Australian referendum, when voters determined whether to remove sections of the constitution that discriminated against Aboriginal people. In scenes that draw an obvious through-line to the present and Australia’s upcoming Indigenous voice to parliament referendum, “vote yes” campaigners are seen getting busy advocating for the cause. Behrendt uses footage of New South Wales campaign director Faith Bandler calling for a strong vote “because the eyes of the world are on Australia”. The vote in 1967 passed by a thumping majority, giving Bell “hope that maybe things could get better”. But, he adds, “eight months later, government authorities bulldozed my fuckin’ house”.
Behrendt had no shortage of launching points for cultural and political discussions, touching on topics including the formation of (and creative works inspired by) the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, using footage from Australia’s greatest protest movie: the recently restored Ningla-A’na. Art and activism are the film’s alpha and omega, and Bell (on board as executive producer) wouldn’t want it any other way.
This isn’t just a documentary about his work; it’s about his attitude, and that’s not an easy thing to convey. Only in a few brief spots does this highly absorbing and informative film drop its kinetic tempo. It comes on like a dance: you can’t help but take its hand, follow its lead and feel its rhythms.
• You Can Go Now is on SBS and NITV on 24 September at 8.30pm, and is available to rent or buy on Google Play and Apple TV store
