In this essay, first published in Quadrant magazine in 2008 and updated here, aAR’s editor looks at the issues raised by the very public debate surrounding an exhibition of photographs by Bill Henson that year.

As the Australian art world is a little chafing dish in a world of bubbling cauldrons, it seemed improbable that an artist’s work could become fodder for broadsheets and tabloids, radio and television — for weeks on end. Those who knew of the photographer Bill Henson’s dark-toned and occasionally disquieting works were more or less confined to that chafing dish. However, in May 2008, Hetty Johnston, the Executive Director of Bravehearts, a child sexual assault advocacy group, walked into a Paddington art gallery and reported what she saw to the police. In fact, she suggested they prosecute the photographer — and the gallery. If only those sterling folk in blue had consulted their records to find an earlier sortie where they behaved like keystone cops, the ensuing fiasco might have been avoided altogether.

The last time politicians bothered to turn their heads in the direction of the art world, like cattle anticipating a fresh hay bale delivery in a paddock, was January 1982: the occasion of the fourth Sydney Biennale. Critic and curator Elwyn Lynn in his catalogue introduction anticipated that, as in times gone by, there was less likelihood of sophisticated tolerance and more likelihood of abrasive confrontation. He was right. There was melee over a large painting by the Chilean-born artist Juan Davila, called Stupid as a Painter, 1981.

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Image: Tamara Dean, Divine Rites #1, giclee on archival photo rag, 25 x 38cm.