TO RENOVATE, MAKE NEW FROM OLD...

"History refuses to let go of us and demands an active involvement in our present." Eddie Chambers

All histories are partial readings, being constructed from a particular cultural or social perspective. The history of art is no different. Women and non-Europeans have tended to be represented as subjects within the image rather than as the creators of images. But since the political art movements of the 1970s, many artists have been challenging or rewriting those exclusive histories.

Employing a range of tactics from direct action and performance to bricolage and multimedia, artists are revisiting old sites and styles of artistic activity. Exploring the processes of making, and creating new work out of old, they are deconstructing established beliefs or conventions and making space for unheard voices.

By juxtaposing or combining anachronistic elements, artists can expose partial views and introduce multiple readings. The past is translated into the present showing history as a continuous thread rather than a point cut off from us today. Some artists seek to criticise this linear view.

Eugene Palmer's paintings display a detailed knowledge of the history of painting, particularly portraiture, exploring the history of Black representations within art.

Eugene Palmer - "Untitled", 1992. (1)

• Could you compile a gallery of new art which reworks old art in some way?
• "...the photographer is not simply the one who records the past, but the one who invents it." Susan Sontag. What do you think?
• What relevance do Renaissance paintings have in the 21st century?
• What if you were to translate a key moment in your life or family history into images?
• Who and what do you think are missing from the history of art?

DISCUSS

RESEARCH

BRAINSTORM

DESCRIBE

COMPARE

Gordon Bennett - Possession Island', 1991 (1)

"I was born in Cherokee territory under the aggressive political act called Arkansas." Jimmie Durham

The art of reclamation and appropriation is partly an attempt to bring back, to reclaim something from the past or from wrongful possession. It can also be a way of reassessing things which were previously ignored or thought unimportant. From the vast bank of images which inform our knowledge of history, only a fraction are actually visible.

Photography as a medium is central to our readings of 19th and 20th century history. For that reason, many recent artists have used photographs to examine how social, historical and political ideas were constructed. Although the two artists featured here primarily use paint, their work makes reference to photographic imagery.

Gordon Bennett is an Australian artist whose paintings appropriate moments from his country's colonial past and reconstruct them within a painterly narrative, illuminating an Aboriginal perspective. Like Palmer, his work also addresses the Eurocentric focus of art history.