Biennale of Sydney: Richard Bell and Benjamin Work

Richard Bell lives and works across Sydney and Brisbane, Australia. His works explore the complex artistic and political intersection of Western, colonial and Indigenous art production in a variety of media including painting, installation, performance and video. Over a career spanning more than three decades, Bell grew out of a generation of Aboriginal activists and remains committed to the politics of Aboriginal emancipation and self-determination.

Benjamin Work is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), of Tongan and Orcadian/Shetlander lineage. His practice weaves together contemporary and traditional Tongan influences, reflecting the layered complexities of cultural identity across the Moana Oceania diaspora. Deeply informed by the transference of oral histories and archival documentation, his work becomes a vessel where past, present, and future intersect. Work’s MFA (Master of Fine Arts), completed in 2024, explored what he terms tu’u vaha’a – occupying the in-between, – a conceptual and spatial position that informs his investigation into Tongan narratives embedded within his maternal lineage. This stance also underpins his ongoing engagement with museum collections and the politics of cultural restitution.