The first great Australian film of the year, YOU CAN GO NOW is truth in invitation, a cheeky play on words and sentiment.
Appropriately premiering on January 26, with many of the Australian population enjoying a public holiday, YOU CAN GO NOW is a splendid film to mark the day.
YOU CAN GO NOW is ostensibly a portrait of Richard Bell, an activist masquerading as an artist, a bon vivant adroit at taking the piss, lopping the tall poppy, mocking pomposity, and profoundly egalitarian, insouciant and defiant.
Iconoclastic but not eccentric, no way in vogue with the vague, Bell’s iconoclasm is a tool used with cunning calculation.
YOU CAN GO NOW parallels Bell’s art practice with the history of the last half century of First Nations activism in Australia and its links to global protest movements.
After the 1967 Referendum received over-whelming support but resulted in underwhelming change in the lived experience of First Nations people, a new era of unapologetic activism emerged in Australia, epitomised by the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972. Influenced by the politics and strategies of the Black Panther movement in the United States, this generation of young people were unapologetic in their demands for land rights and sovereignty.
Bell was heavily influenced by these activists, particularly Gary Foley who appears in the film, as does Emory Douglas, the Black Panther who was dubbed ‘the revolutionary artist’, with whom Bell formed a friendship and creative partnership.
Bell’s political education and the politics of his lived experience is mirrored in his artwork, which includes the installation, ‘No Tin Shed’, a meditation on Bell’s first home that was bulldozed by the government to force the family into town.
Perhaps his deepest homage is ‘Embassy’, an installation that provides a performative space for political ideas. Its significance is reflected in its acquisition by the Tate Modern and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Go now to YOU CAN GO NOW and please don’t leave before the credit crawl or you’ll miss the conga of punchlines.
Trailer: HERE
