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.