My Collection  

Richard Bell / Kamilaroi/Kooma/Jiman/Gurang Gurang people / Australia b.1953 / I didn’t do it 2002 / Gravel, glue and synthetic polymer paint on canvas / 90 x 60cm / Purchased 2002. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Richard Bell

Richard Bell
I didn’t do it 2002

Not Currently on Display

Richard Bell’s work I didn’t do it features the phrase ‘I am not sorry’ constructed from gravel and black paint on a black background. Surrounding these words in smaller text, and in repeated unbroken phrasing, are the words ‘ITWASNTMEITWASNTME’.

This work refers to the reluctance of some Australian politicians to offer an apology for past injustices to Indigenous people. Although I didn’t do it appears didactic, it invites open discussion of current debates concerning Indigenous and minority groups.

Richard Bell was born in Charleville, Queensland in 1953. His mother was of the Kamilaroi people and his father, a stockman, was Jiman. Richard was raised in the Mitchell area on the western Darling Downs, Queensland. After living and working in Moree and Sydney in the early 1980s, Bell moved to Brisbane in 1987 and began to paint.

Like other contemporary Aboriginal artists such as Lin Onus (1948–96) and Robert Campbell Jnr (1944–93), Bell began his artistic career painting boomerangs for tourists. Through these early beginnings, he developed an ability to render the patterns and motifs of Aboriginal art as elegant design.

However, the body of work he has been producing since the early 1990s has often been bluntly ‘inelegant’, and Bell uses text as the most direct means of conveying his point of view. An activist as much as an artist, he works across different media to produce complex, provocative and often humorous works that challenge preconceived ideas of Aboriginal art.