Richard Bell works across a variety of media including painting, installation, performance and video and text to pose provocative, complex, and humorous challenges to our preconceived ideas of Aboriginal art, as well as addressing contemporary debates around identity, place, and politics. One of Australia’s most significant artists, Bell’s work explores the complex artistic and political problems of Western, colonial, and Indigenous art production. As a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities, Bell grew out of a generation of Aboriginal activists and has remained committed to the politics of Aboriginal emancipation and self-determination. Bell is particularly interested in issues of perceived cultural authenticity formed within art. He has famously proclaimed that Aboriginal art is a white invention. That is, the very idea of recognisably Aboriginal art is a projection of non-Aboriginal Australia—a designation of a set of prescribed cultural practices and aesthetic forms that is acknowledged and accepted by, as well as deployed to promote, wider Australian culture.