YOU CAN GO NOW
****
Director: Larissa Behrendt
Principal cast:
Richard Bell
Gary Foley
Vernon Ah Kee
Emory Douglas
Josh Milani
Judy Watson
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 82 mins.
Australian release date: 26 January 2023.
You Can Go Now is an entertaining documentary about Australian artist and activist Richard Bell, a Kamilaroi man from Charleville, Queensland, who lives and works in Meanjin [Brisbane]. Larissa Behrendt’s film entertains because (a), it’s well-made, engaging and utilises innovative and colourful graphics to advance its story, and (b), because Bell is a fascinating personality overflowing with energy, a master of the clever quip to illustrate both his artworks and his arguments.
“There’s two types of Richard Bells – there’s Richie and there’s Richard,” says one of the interviewees in the documentary. The former is the provocative artist who has exhibited all over the world (and whose solo exhibition, including his installation The Tent Embassy, will be on show at Britain’s Tate Modern this year) and the latter the activist who became politicised in Redfern in the 1960s when he was a Field Officer at the Aboriginal Legal Service. Indeed, Bell describes himself as “an activist masquerading as an artist.” You Can Go Now also uses his life and work as a means of examining the last 50 years of Black activism in Australia and to critique the Aboriginal arts industry. In his manifesto Bell’s Theorem: Aboriginal Art, It’s a White Thing! Bell argues that Aboriginal art is treated as a commodity and that those profiting from it are White, rather than the Indigenous artists who create the work.
Behrendt’s film is in limited release but it’s well worth seeking out, especially now when the Voice to Parliament referendum is due in the second half of the year. If you need a refresher course on the treatment and history of Australia’s original inhabitants over the past half-century, You Can Go Now is for you. And you’ll be glad you sought it out; as the director says of her subject, “Richard Bell is a rock star, a larrikin a provocateur – a larger than life personality [who] jumps off the screen to engage, entertain and astound a broad audience. But what I find most compelling about him as a subject is his fierce intellect. His art is a provocative polemic on society, colonisation and Indigenous political ambition.”
Principal cast:
Richard Bell
Gary Foley
Vernon Ah Kee
Emory Douglas
Josh Milani
Judy Watson
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 82 mins.
Australian release date: 26 January 2023.
You Can Go Now is an entertaining documentary about Australian artist and activist Richard Bell, a Kamilaroi man from Charleville, Queensland, who lives and works in Meanjin [Brisbane]. Larissa Behrendt’s film entertains because (a), it’s well-made, engaging and utilises innovative and colourful graphics to advance its story, and (b), because Bell is a fascinating personality overflowing with energy, a master of the clever quip to illustrate both his artworks and his arguments.
“There’s two types of Richard Bells – there’s Richie and there’s Richard,” says one of the interviewees in the documentary. The former is the provocative artist who has exhibited all over the world (and whose solo exhibition, including his installation The Tent Embassy, will be on show at Britain’s Tate Modern this year) and the latter the activist who became politicised in Redfern in the 1960s when he was a Field Officer at the Aboriginal Legal Service. Indeed, Bell describes himself as “an activist masquerading as an artist.” You Can Go Now also uses his life and work as a means of examining the last 50 years of Black activism in Australia and to critique the Aboriginal arts industry. In his manifesto Bell’s Theorem: Aboriginal Art, It’s a White Thing! Bell argues that Aboriginal art is treated as a commodity and that those profiting from it are White, rather than the Indigenous artists who create the work.
Behrendt’s film is in limited release but it’s well worth seeking out, especially now when the Voice to Parliament referendum is due in the second half of the year. If you need a refresher course on the treatment and history of Australia’s original inhabitants over the past half-century, You Can Go Now is for you. And you’ll be glad you sought it out; as the director says of her subject, “Richard Bell is a rock star, a larrikin a provocateur – a larger than life personality [who] jumps off the screen to engage, entertain and astound a broad audience. But what I find most compelling about him as a subject is his fierce intellect. His art is a provocative polemic on society, colonisation and Indigenous political ambition.”
