The words “YOU CAN GO NOW!” blazed in orange as audiences entered Richard Bell’s exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. This demand, painted on a monochromatic map of Australia, epitomizes Bell’s signature wit and political critique, deployed here to undercut governmental policies on immigration and on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights. It set the tone for “You Can Go Now,” the largest Australian institutional survey of the leading artistactivist’s practice, where nearly 40 paintings, installations, videos, and photographs synthesized Bell’s longstanding examination of sovereignty, identity politics, and inequity.
A descendant of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman, and Goreng Goreng people, Bell was born in 1953 in the rural town of Charleville, Queensland. For much of Bell’s youth, Queensland was a state governed by conservative, right-wing politics and…