the point of self-mutilation rather than portraying a display of resistance or strength in opposition to their colonisation. The decapitated Indigenous Australian figure is looking for a head to replace his missing one and Bennett parallels this process to a "transplantation of culture". Outsider is one of Bennett's many works that features criticism on Captain James Cook's positioning of Indigenous Australians as 'savages', 'primitives' and therefore as 'ahistorical' which Bennett claims is nothing more than a distorted "mirror reflection of European societies". Bennett expresses a degree of discontent toward 'white' Australia and has stated that it has proven to be a "master of moralising" in his own experiences. Some individuals have come to regard his expression of an Aboriginal point of view as a 'guilt trip' designed to make non-Indigenous Australians feel guilty about Australia's past. In other instances, some have derided his works as existing within the 'guilt industry' and derogatorily denoted as being 'politically correct'. Sources of Inspiration Vincent Van Gogh Outsider is one of the first paintings to register Bennett's shift toward a more deconstructive mode. It is a homage and a deconstruction of Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles (1888) and The Starry Night (1889). Outsider was inspired by the 1988 bicentennial anniversary of Australia since the arrival of the first British convict ships. It was also painted in 1988 which marked a centennial anniversary since Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles in 1888. He describes this coincidental and parallel relationship as a decision to reflect "what was happening in Australia [and] to Van Gogh in his own particular situation". This was to show both the isolation of Indigenous Australians and Van Gogh. Bennett also drew inspiration from Van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889) and its conception within an asylum. In an interview with Pat Hoffie, Bennett describes this as an interest in the "pain and frustration" of Van Gogh. He articulates a mood of displacement within Outsider through combining the decapitated torso with the spurting blood turning into the spirals of Van Gogh's sky. By appropriating famous works of Van Gogh, Bennett posits that his painting is inspired and informed by "postmodern deconstruction and… strategies of appropriation" to produce an ironic strategy of ‘history’ paintings. His goal is to draw on the iconographical paradigm of Australia and by extension Europe, to investigate Euro-Australian representation but with a particular focus on Aboriginal people. By recontextualising images Bennett