From the reserve to Redfern, artist Richard Bell learned the power of Blak solidarity

The artist and activist has been a staunch defender of Aboriginal rights for 50 years. He's showing no signs of slowing down.

Bell's work is uncompromising, much as his politics have been for decades.

Richard Bell has the energy of a man much his junior.

The 70-year-old is entitled to a more sedate existence. His career as an artist, long in the making, is finally witnessing long-deserved recognition, both at home and internationally.

He also has decades of radical activism under his belt, one of Blak justice’s staunchest warriors.

Richard Bell's history as an activist informs his firebrand works, which dissect Australian society's racism.

But even as a new film documenting his life and work, ‘You Can Go Now’, shows just how energetically he has dedicated himself to art and activism for decades, Bell says he’s not interested in slowing down.

“I still like to party,” he told NITV.

“I take every opportunity that I can to have fun.”

Bell is calling from Milan, where despite the early hour he is gregarious and foul-mouthed as ever. The Kamilaroi Kooma Jiman Gurang Gurang man is in hot demand.

The art fairs of Europe are clamouring for his work: a recent piece, which displayed the (rapidly increasing) rent owed by white society to Aboriginal people, was a hot ticket item at documenta15 in Kassel, Germany.

His practice, which covers paint, installation, video and more, has long reflected the discord of racial inequality in Australia. Blunt messages are often jarringly displayed in bright colours, superficial mirrors to this country’s sunny view of itself.

Indeed, Bell has always half-jokingly maintained that he is an activist masquerading as an artist.

A political awakening

The Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern became a hub of Blak activism in the 1970s.

He came of age in 1970s Redfern, when that area’s status as the heart of Blak political action was being formed.

“I’m really lucky I landed in Redfern. The first guy I met was (late actor and activist) Kevin Smith," said Bell.

“I had just arrived at Central Station from Melbourne. I was walking along the platform and saw this Blakfulla. We eyed each other off, and then cautiously started talking.”

Bell had no money and no ticket home to Queensland.

“And he just looked after me.

“He said 'come with me' and took me to the Foundation of Aboriginal Affairs and lined me up with a place to stay overnight. He took me to Redfern and introduced me to a whole heap of people. And then we went out to Cronulla, there must have been about seven or eight people that I met that night.

“And those of us who are still alive, we’re all still friends. It was a really amazing welcome. I stayed for 10 years.”

His crowd were the heavy-hitters of the Aboriginal political scene, luminaries of Blaktivism like Paul Coe, Gary Foley and Bronwyn Penrith.

Despite the brutality of the authorities and a heavily policed existence, he has fond memories.

“By gee, we had so much fun. Despite all the adversity that we were facing, we had a good time while we were doing it.”

Bell says that warmth, and the deep solidarity it represented, crew was essential for the Redfern crew’s survival.

'Never be too proud'

Girls at Queensland's Yarrabah Aboriginal Reserve in 1954. Richard Bell was born on a similar reserve near the rural town of Mitchell the year before, and says the deprivations were extreme.

It was a solidarity he experienced on the Aboriginal reserve outside Mitchell in rural Queensland in the 1950s. Bell spent the first two years of his life in a tent, his family waiting for the surrounding white farms to toss out enough corrugated iron for them to build a home.

“Growing up, like most Blakfullas from my area, we lived in abject poverty,” he told NITV.

“There just wasn't enough work. The only way we survived was by helping each other.

“One of the men would come back from working and they'd be all cashed up. And of course, everybody would borrow money from them. The first thing that the woman in the family would have to do is go and pay back all the people who lent her money when their husbands came home!

“So I saw this incredible economic system established informally by Aboriginal people. It was such a brilliant survival mechanism.

“And it taught me the same thing. So that's to help people out, and also never to be too proud to ask for help.”

Teaching the next generation

Richard is now passing on his artistic knowledge to the next generation. Perhaps even more importantly he's teaching them the value of solidarity. Credit: jarod woods

The solidarity that sustained Bell through both childhood and his political awakening is something he’s now passing on to the next generation.

proppaNOW is an art collective for First Nations practitioners that Bell co-founded in 2003.

Based in Brisbane, it gives up and coming urban artists a leg into the industry. They have shown exhibitions around the country, but more than that, it teaches collaboration.

“We set up [proppaNOW] because we all knew about the power of collectives,” said Bell.

“The power of collective is always greater than the sum of its parts. And we use that to assert ourselves into the Australian art scene.”

Bell’s feelings on that scene are well-known. One of his most famous works is a chaotic, Jackson Pollock-esque painting entitled “Aboriginal Art – it's a white thing”.

Accompanied by a manifesto, it decried the exploitation of Indigenous artists by the white structures of the art world, much as Pollock himself appropriated his famous drip technique from Native Americans.

“We had a place but it was to the side and below the white artists. So we just said ‘No, that's not good enough for us’.

“[proppaNOW] allowed us a voice. When a group of Blakfullas get together, you know everybody’s looking at that. So I'd encourage young people to set up collectives...

"You can't do anything significant without a team of people around you."

'You Can Go Now' screens across the country from January 26. Check here for theatre information.