Review of You can go now, a film by Larissa Berendt
For anyone who is interested in living in contemporary Australia they should visit this film. In the year when the voice referendum is being hotly contested an understanding of the history of the 1972 aboriginal tent embassy is important. That embassy was set up by the black power movement and key activists interviewed or depicted in the film: Dennis Walker Sam Watson, Bobby Sykes, Paul Coe, Gary Foley, Gary Williams, Marcia Langton, Oodgeroo, Mum Shirl and Billy Craigie.
From this activism came the aboriginal legal service, the medical centres, the housing co-op’s and all of the early bureaucracy of aboriginal groups in the 1970s. This uprising didn’t just come out of the blue, there was a long history of dissent before that, going all the way back to the early 19th century.
Richard Bell is an internationally known aboriginal artist along with Judy Watson, Fiona Foley and many others. The film claims that most Australian art, bought, sold and seen overseas, is aboriginal art. Richard Bell turns up in Turin in Venice and in the Tate Gallery in London. Richard is supported by aboriginal activists, people like Gary Foley, Bob Weatherall, Marcia Langton, Nicole Watson (Sam and Cathy Watson’s daughter), to name a few. Richard Valkyries teeth at the Redfern legal service in the early 1970s he learn how to deal with the media. He used subversive humour against the white art establishment and bureaucrats.
Richard Bell came from Mitchell in western Queensland where his family were evicted from their tin shed. It was bulldozed into the ground which became the subject of an artwork shown in Europe. His mother died when she was only 41 years of age.
This is a video the Tate Gallery in London made about the artist Richard Bell. They used some images from Guniwaya Ngigu (We Fight) that the Radical Times Archive supplied with the filmmaker Madeline McGrady’s blessing …
The film You can go now is currently showing at the Palace theatre in James Street, New Farm and another capital cities. It’s premier here and mention received loud applause from the audience.
Ian Curr
27 Jan 2023