Camouflage #4 2003

GORDON BENNETT (1955-2014)

Camouflage #4 2003

synthetic polymer paint on linen
183.0 x 152.0 cm
signed, dated and inscribed verso: G Bennett 26 Feb 2003 / "CAMOUFLAGE #4" 182.5 x 152 cms/ Acrylic on linen

Provenance:
Sherman Galleries, Sydney (stamped on stretcher verso)
Schubert Contemporary, Queensland
Private collection, Queensland

Exhibited:
Figure/Ground (Zero), Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 17 July - 9 August 2003, cat.4 (illus. exhibition catalogue, front cover)

Reference:
Morris, T., 'One Year On: The New United Nations Human Rights Council,' Human Rights Defender, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, vol.16, no.2, August 2007, pp.15-18 (illus.)
Walsh, T., 'Figure/Ground (Zero): The Camouflage Works of Gordon Bennett and Andy Warhol,' di'van Art Journal, The University of New South Wales Art & Design, Sydney, 2021, pp.68-79

Related Works:
Camouflage #7 2003, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 182.5 x 152 cm, Australian National University collection, Canberra Camouflage #8 2003, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 182.5 x 152.0 cm, Australian War Memorial collection, Canberra

Estimate: $30000 - 40000

Result Hammer: $28000

Gordon Bennett was an unflinchingly political and informed artist. Only weeks after former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous ‘unknown unknowns’ speech, Bennett painted Camouflage #4 2003 as the controversial countdown to the US invasion of Iraq drew near. Presented in a solo exhibition titled Figure/ground (Zero) held at Sherman Galleries later that year, the painting appeared contemporaneously to the throes of the invasion and preceding Saddam Hussein’s capture. Over the suite of ten camouflage paintings the figures gradually morph and unveil from a gas-masked soldier to four graphically repeated portraits of Hussein. Historical paintings typically emerge after the events have taken place, giving artists time to reflect. However, Bennett saw no time to reflect; as a politically engaged artist he offers a rare sense of immediacy for viewers back then and even today. Collectively they captured the unease and paranoia that plagued the West during the global War on Terror following the 11 September attacks. The undidactic nature of the work intensifies this feeling; Bennett provides little commentary to arrive at both aesthetic and political ambiguity ripe for interpretation.

Historically, the premise of Western painting is to make its subject visible and cogent to perception through rational treatments of perspective, light, and space. Bennett’s post-modern utilisation of the camouflage resists this.  As Ian McLean states, the artist ‘generates a complex series of counter discourses that threaten to permanently destabilise any singular meaning’ in his work.(1) The picture verges on abstraction; divided into patterned planes in the foreground and background. The indistinguishable bust derived from the gas-mask figure is posed against a background filled with a rudimentary shamsa design; a pattern symbolising divine sunlight used to adorn Islamic manuscripts and architecture. The contrasting meaning of these patterns confers a symbolic contradiction of both concealment yet illumination, meant to allegorise a state of political and representational uncertainty.

Bennett describes this series as being about ‘colonial dominance’.(2) Whether it was America’s invasion and Western colonialism more broadly, or Hussein’s violent repression of Kurdish Iraqis, the history of militarism and its ensemble of strategies and technologies have used camouflage to obfuscate reality to both violent and rhetorical ends. This sentiment was felt more keenly by Bennett as an artist of Indigenous (Birri Gubba and Darambal) and Anglo-Celtic heritage, who explored the intersection of Australia’s colonisation, xenophobic nationalism, and Modernist visual culture. Although these images are not explicitly violent, their abstractions sanitise the underlying fear invoked by Hussein’s use of chemical warfare and the conflict against global terrorism. With the clarity of hindsight, Rumsfeld’s ‘unknowns’ and the invasion were predicated on deception, proving Bennett’s intuitive use of the camouflage ever more appropriate.

 Footnotes:

1. McLean, I., ‘Gordon Bennett's Home Decor: The Joker in the Pack,’ Law Text Culture, no.4, 1998, pp.287-307.
2. Gordon Bennett, quoted in a conversation with Bill Wright, in Gellatly, K., Gordon Bennett, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2007, p.10

 Tim Marvin

Tim Marvin is an emerging curator and art historian based in Sydney. He has a Bachelor of Art Theory (Honours, First Class) from the University of New South Wales, and currently holds the position of gallery registrar at Sullivan + Strümpf, Sydney.

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