I have been trying to come to grips with the whole Bill Henson exhibition catastrophe. We know what happened, but why did it happen? The whole thing seems to me to have been orchestrated. But by whom? The press? From the morning of the exhibition opening the papers were asking whether it was art or pornography and radio stations were inviting listeners (most of whom I bet didn’t even know who Bill Henson was) to ring in and give their opinion of an exhibition that had yet to open. The ‘Christian Right’ and all the other ill informed do-gooders were whipped into a frenzy and Bam! the police had closed the exhibition before it opened, seizing photographs and talking about laying charges. By the next morning the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was calling the images ‘disgusting’. Within a couple of days a witch-hunt was in progress, searching out other art galleries who had Henson photographs in their collections.
But why now? Bill Henson has been exhibiting in Australia and overseas since the ‘70s. His work is owned by and shown in Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna. He is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists. Why wasn’t there an uproar when he exhibited his untitled series in 1995-1996? This was a much more disturbing a series of images. Why wasn’t his retrospective at the Art gallery of NSW in 2005 shut down?
Someone I was talking to about it, expressed an opinion that it was good timing for the labour party. Milton Orkopoulos had just been found guilty of child sex offences and the supply of drugs – were they trying to deflect attention from that? Or was there she asked something else that they have successfully swept under the carpet?
As a mother I personally wouldn’t want to see my daughter or son photographed in this way, to be viewed by strangers. But isn’t that the whole crux of the matter? Surely the parents of those children would have had to sign some sort of release form. Surely those children would have agreed to do it, because believe me there is no way you can get a 13-year-old to do something they don’t want to do. No one has come forward and said that they were coerced into it.
My partner has a 13-year-old daughter who is just starting to go through puberty. She is experiencing a whole lot of firsts in her journey to adulthood. First period, first hickie, first crush on a boy and I often see the look that Bill Henson’s models have, on her face. It’s a mixture of bewilderment, fear and excitement. I have always (maybe naively) interpreted Henson’s work as the search for the moment when childhood innocence goes and the young adult emerges. I have always thought that the nudity and the sexuality in the images strengthen that concept.
Another thing that fascinated me about the whole uproar was that if you don’t want to look at pictures of naked adolescents then there is a very easy answer – don’t go to the exhibition. If the police hadn’t acted, about 600 people at most would have seen those images at the gallery. Most would have been sold to private collectors and a couple to various art galleries. One of the key issues for the anti-paedophilia mob was online access. Perhaps this was a mistake on the part of the art gallery but wouldn’t you have to know that the images were there before you could access them.
In the ‘60s many Australian artists and writers felt they needed to go to Europe to achieve success and recognition. I thought those days were gone. We should be celebrating our artists for their beautiful work and encouraging them to stay in Australia and share it with us.
I think the thing that horrified me the most about the whole chain of events was how quickly it went from a whisper into an almost-lynching. I could just about smell the books burning.
I am glad that charges against Bill Henson and the owners of the Roselyn Oxley Gallery were never laid, however I think that the damage done to the reputation of the Australian art community both here and overseas will take a very long time to be repaired.
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Bill Henson « // March 13, 2009 at 6:57 am
[...] You can read it here. [...]
mugsey // September 21, 2009 at 3:21 am
Requiring understanding are the concepts of ‘grooming’ and ‘normalization’, familiar to mental health workers, though not generally to the broader lay community.
‘Grooming’ describes the insidious coercion and seduction of children by their abusers, and involves a great deal more subtlety and investment on the part of protagonists than the ‘fifties cliche of a shadowy paedophile proffering a few hard-boiled lollies outside school grounds.
According to David Marr, the beautiful twelve year-old model (her age at the time of the shoot) had been groomed by Mr Henson (along with her parents and big sister) since she was seven years old. That’s five years of nurturing intentions and grooming of a family to get these particular shots of a beautiful, nude, pubescent quarry.
‘Grooming’ is usually devoid of overt sexual behaviour despite the sexual excitement of predation and the power and triumphalism inherent in the befriending, alliance-forming and hoodwinking of parents and teachers and the community (perverse elements of which are inevitably in collusion).
It is a classic ‘wolf-in-sheep’s clothing’/Little Red Riding Hood scenario (although other predatory creatures come to mind when one takes into account the obsessive degree of cunning that is deployed in the process).
‘Normalisation’ is the process of rendering adult sexual pathologies – such as child sexual abuse and paedophilia – socially acceptable. It relies upon community ignorance and the misguided, propagandist notion that protecting children from abuse is mere old-fashioned, stitched-up wowserism in a liberated secular society. It relies upon the corollary that in the contemporary world under-age children are not psychologically immature and vulnerable, but are sophisticated mini-adults capable of knowing their own minds and of taking care of themselves.
In fact, should anything perchance happen to them, they will be resilient to any likely ill effects – indeed sexual relations between adults and children are harmless activities and a necessary part of gaining sexual experience and the overall getting of wisdom.
Such is the hoodwinking of the community (or what is referred to in child protection circles as the “grooming of the community”), and is as complicit as the wife and mother who does not wish to see, or the neighbour who persistently turns a blind eye to mounting evidence that a child is at risk.
Not much help for a child in a world awash with reassurances that everything is fine, it’s art, he’s a friend, he’s famous, he’s in galleries, and so on.
Below is an image of an old photograph by Mr Henson indicative of his longstanding predilections that was sold at auction in September last year by a private owner (below reserve price). This model was depicted half-naked in a similar (airbrushed) photograph previously offloaded in a hurry to auction in May.
Caution image:
http://www.menziesartbrands.com/cgi/dmcat.cgi?rm=display_lot&item_id=14997
Mr Henson, his publicist, and the art world are presently engaged in the ‘normalisation’ process essential to Mr Henson’s restoration to the art pantheon and membership of the Melbourne/Sydney Establishments. There has always been a lot at stake for both protagonist and participants, and this reinstatement is no less systematic and infinitely patient than the predatory processes being normalised and edified at the heart of Mr Henson’s aesthetic programme.