Richard Bell

Private Collection, Brisbane

Angela Goddard and Megan Tamati-Quennell, (eds), Richard Bell Reader: Tate Modern, 2023, p. 1 (cover image)

OSMOS at Independent 20th Century, New York City, August 29 - September 8, 2024

In 2013 Richard Bell developed the idea for Embassy, his satellite project of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy protest. This work, now in the Tate and MCA collections, came as a response to a new generation of activists who had embraced the spirit of the 1970s protests from which Bell’s own activism emerged. As a further homage to this movement, Bell began a series of protest paintings which have since been exhibited internationally, including at Documenta 15 (2022). Strike is from this series of works and was the feature work for his publication accompanying Embassy when it was exhibited in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall in 2023. Strike can be read in relation to ongoing protests against climate change which for many indigenous people globally is affecting their ancestral homelands. Works from this series are held in notable collections including the Neue Gallery, Kassel, the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, KADIST, Paris/San Francisco and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.