Dr. Desmond Manderson lashes new layers atop Australia's colonial founding myths, through Gordon Bennett's 1991 painting, Possession Island.
When Captain Cook planted the Union Jack on Possession Island in 1770, Australia was entirely subsumed within the British Empire. Colonial imaginings of this moment reinforced the legal myth around terra nullius, still propagated in constitutional classes today. Gordon Bennett whip-splashes alternative histories atop the time-worn tropes, exposing the hidden witnesses to violence at Australia's coming-of-age party. Possession Island perverts our expectations of empty, untamed lands, and collapses the strict divisions between aboriginal, colonial, and post-colonial art. Showing at the Tate Modern's 'A Year in Art: Australia 1992', the painting also challenges colonisation in the canon - from contemporary Australian artists like McCubbin, through to Jackson Pollock's American modernism.
Part of EMPIRE LINES' Australia Season, marking the 30 year anniversary of the Mabo vs. Queensland Case (1992) and Tate Modern's A Year in Art: Australia 1992. Listen to the other episodes with Jeremy Eccles.

PRESENTER: Dr. Desmond Manderson, Professor and Director of the Centre for Law, Arts and the Humanities at Australian National University. He is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
ART: Possession Island (Abstraction), Gordon Bennett (1991).
IMAGE: 'Possession Island/(Abstraction)'.
SOUNDS: New Weird Australia.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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