Richard Bell

Richard Bell (born 1953) is an Aboriginal Australian artist and political activist.

He is one of the founders of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective.

Born in 1953 in Charleville, Queensland, Bell is a Kamilaroi man.

He engaged in political activism in Redfern, Sydney, in the 1970s, in causes such as Aboriginal self-determination.

His art continues to reflect this.

Bell works in many media: paintings, video art, installations, text art and performance art.

His subjects are largely based on various Indigenous rights issues: the effect of colonialism on Aboriginal people in Australia, which has rendered their history invisible; identity; and the complex issues surrounding the production of Aboriginal art.

In 2003, Bell co-founded the Indigenous art collective proppaNOW, with Jennifer Herd, Vernon Ah Kee, Fiona Foley and others.

In the same year, his work came to the attention of the wider public for Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell's Theorem).

Bell came to the attention of the wider community after his 240×540 cm painting Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell's Theorem) won the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA).

It prominently featured the text "Aboriginal art. It's a white thing".

In his manifesto accompanying the work, Bell pointed out inequities that had existed in the Aboriginal art industry for a long time.

In 2006, the Queensland art critic Rex Butler profiled his work for Australian Art Collector magazine.

Bell caused controversy in April 2011 after revealing that he had selected the winner of the prestigious Sir John Sulman Prize through the toss of a coin.

In 2011 Bell was interviewed in a digital story and oral history for the State Library of Queensland's James C Sourris AM Collection.

In the interview Bell talks to art historian Rex Butler about the development of his artistic practice, about winning the NATSIAA award, and the artist group proppaNOW.

In March 2012, Bell won a court case against a person who had issued a take-down notice in 2011, for "unjustifiable threats of copyright infringement", and was awarded A$147,000 in damages, setting "an important precedent".

In 2013 he presented the eight-episode TV series Colour Theory on National Indigenous Television.

Bell's work Pay the Rent, aka Embassy, a replica of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, was first displayed in Melbourne in 2013.

He says that the work "represents a number calculating how much money the Australian Government owes Aboriginal people — and that's just for the rent of the place".

The interior of the tent functions as a display space, in which videos and other archival materials are shown, and for hosting public talks and performances, and informal conversations.

His self-portrait was a finalist of the 2015 Archibald Prize.

Bell created a new series of paintings and an installation for display at documenta 15, a major exhibition in Germany, in 2022.

Pay the Rent has since been erected at Performa 15 in New York City and at the 2019 Venice Biennale in 2019.

In mid-2022, the work was installed on Friedrichsplatz, in front of Fridericianum, a museum in Kassel, Germany, as part of the international quinquennial exhibition documenta.

Pay the Rent / Embassy was displayed in Adelaide on the forecourt of the Art Gallery of South Australia, as part of Tarnanthi, on 22–23 October 2022.

It was accompanied by film screenings and talks, as part of the Adelaide Film Festival's new visual arts programme.

In 2023 the installation will appear at London's Tate Gallery.

Bell's work has been included in many significant group exhibitions, including:

Solo exhibitions include:

Bell's Archibald Prize entry, Me, is in the University of Queensland's art museum.

Other works are held in many collections, including: