Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 22 May

You Can Go Now! (Behrendt, 2022)

Last week I mentioned to subscribers that I was hoping to open up one column a week to requests or recommendations from readers.

I’ve received a few but some of them – TV series mainly – require quite a commitment. They’re going into the mix, though, and I’ll get to them eventually.

Today’s recommendation actually came from readers a few months ago – foundation subscribers ELS and BS of Tawa in Wellington – but it has taken me a while to get around to it. So very glad I did.

Richard Bell is an aboriginal artist – he describes himself as an activist masquerading as an artist – whose work is designed to confront and challenge the predominately white Australian art and political establishments, a challenge that he meets head on.

Born in rural Queensland in 1953, Bell’s political awakening came at the age of 14 when the government bulldozed the tin shack he lived in with his mother and brother and moved them into a condemned building in town that had to be declared ‘un-condemned’ for the purpose.

In 1967 the Australian government conducted a referendum in which white Australians could decide whether Aboriginals should actually be considered people or not. 91% of the public graciously voted ‘yes’ and it was hoped that the result might mean some change in the economic and social situation so many indigenous Australians found themselves in.

Fat chance. In fact what support that had previously been available was withdrawn and thousands of young Aboriginal people moved from rural Australia to cities where they might find work.

In places like central Sydney suburb Redfern – I say ‘like Redfern’ but I’m not sure there were many equivalents – young Aboriginal people were inspired by the civil rights movement in the US to become radicalised and start protesting the plight of their people. Bell was one of them.

The documentary You Can Go Now! is a portrait of a man who turned the combination of a powerful sense of injustice, considerable personal hardship and a tremendous sense of humour, into an international art career. An early scene in the film shows him on a launch at the 2019 Venice Biennale, following a scale model of the Australian pavilion that he has stuck on a barge and wrapped in chains.

He pitched that idea to be the official Australian exhibit but was turned down, so he decided to gatecrash the event and do it anyway.

But the film isn’t just about Bell, the artist. It’s also a potted history of late-20th century Australian race relations and a guide to how – in the third decade of the 21st century – public acknowledgements of colonial crimes are now commonplace and what had to happen to achieve that.

One of the ironies I thought about while watching the film is that Bell is almost the perfect stereotype of an Australian. He’s an iconoclast, a larrikin, anti-authoritarian – everything that Australia thinks of as its own national character. Except for the colour of his skin.

It’s a rich film, full of ideas, and – for those of us who grew up outside Australia – there’s lots to chew on, not least the tales of the appropriation and economic exploitation of Aboriginal art by the Australian establishment. Hundreds of millions of dollars of international revenue. Where did it all go? Not into making Aboriginal artists millionaires, that’s for sure.

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Where to watch You Can Go Now!