Richard Bell (artist)
Richard Bell is an Australian artist and political activist. He is one of the founders of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based aboriginal art collective. He lives in Brisbane, Queensland.
Bell came to the attention of the wider community after his 240×540 cm painting Scientia E Metaphysica won the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. It prominently featured the text "Aboriginal Art – It's A White Thing".
In 2006, the Queensland art critic Rex Butler profiled his work for Australian Art Collector magazine.
Bell caused controversy in April 2011 after revealing that he had selected the winner of the prestigious Sir John Sulman Prize through the toss of a coin.
In March 2012, Bell won a court case against a person who had issued a take-down notice in 2011, for "unjustifiable threats of copyright infringement", and was awarded $147,000 in damages, setting "an important precedent".
In 2013 he presented the eight-episode TV series Colour Theory on National Indigenous Television.
His self-portrait was a finalist of the 2015 Archibald Prize.
