Liam Benson: Virtue Without Stain
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
“The crest of Clan Russell, that of Liam Benson’s beloved Scottish-born ‘Gran’ hung in the artist’s childhood North-West Sydney home. The Russell heraldic motto, Virtus sine macula, translated as ‘Virtue without stain’ gives title to this exhibition,” Barbara Dowse writes. “Such insignia, texts and motifs of ethos, heritage and identity via flags, banners, embroidery, studio-made ceremonial regalia and body painting continue to inform and pervade the multi-media practice of the artist-activist.”
Liam Benson: Virtue Without Stain presents sixty-seven images of Benson’s works, words from the gallery director, exhibition curator and artist, and four essays that contextualise a visual arts practice spanning two decades – by Dowse, Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Dr Christine Dean and Steven Lindsay Ross.
Liam Benson, Coat of Arms 2009–2010, C-type print, 61 × 91.5cm. Collection of the artist
“Benson’s earliest works, produced from 2004 to 2013, were based entirely around portraiture,” survey curator Richard Perram OAM explains, where “Benson used himself as the subject and with the addition of costume, make-up and text created unsettling images of great beauty that subtly dealt with issues around masculinity, homophobia, gender and colonial history.” Benson embarked on a new direction in 2013 with embroidery and has also returned to photography. As acknowledged across the catalogue, the artist also embarked on Bathurst-specific engagements through collaboration with community workshop groups.
The contexts the essayists provide carry us competently through the complexity on offer from Benson; competently, but not always comfortably – a productive thing. In Dowse’s words, here are works “characterised by anxiety, by unease and deep empathy”; here “is a paean for understanding, inclusion and acceptance.” In an especially queer way, Benson rubs up against embodiments, blemishes, toxicities, and temptations of masculine Australian myth – something Cunningham takes as a provocative entry point which is then supported by the disciplinary and experiential expertise of Dean and Ross. “Benson works uncompromisingly at the margins,” Dean writes. “These are not merely geographical margins but also cultural peripheries, edges and boundaries” at which Benson works to map out and define “a new attitude in Australian art, namely that of a queer regionalism.” Ross speaks to attitudinal authenticity in Benson the artist, mapping a collaborative relationship against the backdrop of the impacts of colonialism on First Nations life and culture. Ross’s essay
ends by capturing something of the spirit of the Benson ethos: “Liam and I have collaborated many times . . . Have the collaborations been perfect? No. But they have always been beautiful.”
Essayist insights serve as a vital source to situate Benson’s often-dazzling artistic practice; a practice that, in the artist’s words, has been informed by “diverse perspectives, stories and values” and that through the aid of expert analysis advances understandings and challenges to gender, culture, sexuality and identity across a sizeable selection of the artist’s oeuvre. This catalogue is a companion: both to the survey itself and to the impacts of Benson’s contribution beyond Bathurst; in fact, beyond even select venues the survey tours in 2023 and 2024, to profound grounds of a more beautiful Australia.
Dr Joseph Brennan is a novelist and academic at the borders of male sexuality.
