Outsider

Outsider is a 1988 oil and acrylic painting by post-modern Indigenous Australian artist Gordon Bennett. The painting focuses on issues of the increasing isolation Indigenous Australians feel in their own country, with the date the painting was painted in (1988) being the bicentennial anniversary of white settlement in Australia. The painting depicts an Indigenous Australian with a severed head along with two classical and sculptural heads and reflects a lone culturally marginal figure who exists outside the social contexts of the mainstream world and art world. Outsider has been appropriated and is intended to be interpreted through the lens of the 'other', otherwise known as those who exist to a subordinate social category under the dominant and westernised culture. It is charged with the feelings of frustration and confusion of Indigenous Australians. Within this painting Bennett has appropriated famous works of Van Gogh, including Bedroom in Arles (1888) and The Starry Night (1889) and uses the paintings to represent his own life. The interpretation of Outsider varies between critics but is mainly suggested to be reflective of a man divided by the ideology of his upbringing and of his place. Description Outsider measures 290 x 180 cm and is published as a collection within the University of Queensland's Art Museum. Bennett's subject is depicted through the central figure of an Indigenous Australian man's decapitated torso in of Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles (1888) with blood spurting from his gaping neck. The upright torso leans over the yellow-brown bed in Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles while two white decapitated classical sculptural heads are lolling dumbly on the bed as opposed to the empty bed of Van Gogh's. The walls are covered with red hand marks which are assumed to be the bloodshed of the decapitated figure. Along the top half of the painting, the spurting blood from the neck leads into and blends with the sky which has stylised strokes of Van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889) painted with the same colour scheme but with darker hues of blue, yellow, and black. It is suggested that the dots and dashes in the sky reflect Western Desert Aboriginal 'dot paintings' which is the first instance in which Bennett makes these allusions in his work. These dots provide a connection to Bennett's Indigenous heritage.