Unfinished Business: The Art of Gordon Bennett

Publication Details Softcover, 260 x 210mm (portrait), 200 pages, ISBN: 9781925922011

Author and/or Editor name/s Zara Stanhope, Abigail Bernal, Simon Wright, J Faith (Kapwa) Almiron, Tim Riley Walsh

Author and/or Editor bio/s Dr Zara Stanhope is Director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, and former Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Abigail Bernal is Assistant Curator, International Art, at the Queensland Art Gallery |Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Simon Wright is Assistant Director, Learning and Public Engagement, at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Dr J Faith (Kapwa) Almiron is an interdisciplinary cultural studies scholar and critic completing doctoral research at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Tim Riley Walsh is the Brisbane Desk Editor for ArtAsiaPacific, Hong Kong, and recently completed his MPhil thesis on the archive of the late Gordon Bennett, ‘An Aetiology of Racism: Gordon Bennett’s Archive and Affective Conceptualism’.

Year of publication 2020

Publisher Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Abstract Unfinished Business offers fresh insight into the work of Australian artist Gordon Bennett (1955–2014), including new interpretations of his intelligent synthesis of influences and ideas and globally recognised contribution to contemporary art. More than 120 colour reproductions of Bennett’s paintings, installations and video works — including not only key series but also a selection of rarely seen works on paper — as well as written commentaries by Dr Zara Stanhope, Abigail Bernal, Simon Wright, Dr J Faith Almiron and Tim Riley Walsh confirm Bennett as one of our most important contemporary artists whose influence continues to reverberate around Australia and across the world.

Produced in close collaboration with the Estate of Gordon of Bennett, Unfinished Business includes works created from the 1980s to 2014 sourced from studio, public and private collections, including early installation works; Bennett’s ‘history’ paintings; mirror paintings, De Stijl works; his ‘Home décor’ series; ‘Notes to Basquiat’ works; abstract ‘Stripe’ paintings; and late works showing renewed engagement with political contexts. Pages from the artist’s personal notebooks, as well as archival photographs provided by the Gordon Bennett Estate, provide intimate insight into how the artist worked with images and text and used drawing as a generative tool, and convey the connection with international artists in his work.