Police have interviewed photographer Bill Henson about an art exhibition featuring nude shots of teenagers.The exhibition was to open at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in the Sydney suburb of Paddington last night.The gallery agreed to suspend the exhibition while police conduct interviews.
Bill Henson shows 'society exploits children in eroticised ways'
MARK COLVIN: As the former executive director of the Australia Institute, Clive Hamilton published a controversial report titled "Corporate Paedophilia".
On the Bill Henson case, he argues that while artists have a right to push boundaries, society has a responsibility to push back.
"The girl, the model, could not possibly understand the implications of being presented naked to the world."
"If this girl at age 30 has a completely different, you know has a career and an integrity and, you know, a history behind her and suddenly these pictures pop up in a magazine or on the internet, I mean, I'd imagine there's a good chance she'd be humiliated.
"And yet it seems to me that the adults around her who have her interests at heart and organised, approved the exhibition, were not fully aware of these dangers and have probably caused that child some damage."
Defiance as gallery tests boundaries
AUSTRALIA'S artistic community defiantly voiced its support for photographer Bill Henson yesterday as another senior government minister criticised his work and police continued their child pornography investigation.
In an act of solidarity with the embattled artist, leading dealer Denis Savill hung a Bill Henson image of two nude young people in the window of his Sydney gallery.
"This will give them something to grizzle about," Mr Savill said as he hung one of the works from Henson's 1992-1993 Untitled series.
Mr Savill, like many of his art industry colleagues, was appalled when police last week confiscated photographs by Henson - one of Australia's leading contemporary artists - and decided to hang the picture beside an Arthur Boyd nude, "to remind people that nudes have inspired artists for centuries".
"I'm saying, 'I'm supporting Bill', I don't see any problem with this work," Mr Savill said. "I think his images can be very thought-provoking, and it certainly raises your awareness about children in a modern society, but it's not offensive."
Zahava Elenberg, a former Henson child model ... "I'm a parent myself and I abhor child pornography, but this is not child pornography. It's artistic and creative."
This is not porn, say Henson's models
Zahava Elenberg was 12 when she posed for a series of dark and evocative photographs taken by Bill Henson.
More than 20 years later she still has vivid memories of working with the artist, but "absolutely no regrets".
"Bill asked my mother at an exhibition opening if I would like to pose for him and we talked about it and decided to do it," says Ms Elenberg, now a 34-year-old mother. "We went to this old building in Melbourne. It was quite dark but I never felt uncomfortable. Bill made you feel incredibly safe and calm. I was involved in the artistic process and I never felt that I wasn't in control.
"I absolutely support Bill Henson. I'm a parent myself and I abhor child pornography, but this is not child pornography. It's artistic and creative.
Nude Venus too risqué for London Underground
Transport for London was drawn further into a row over sex, censorship and artistic prurience last night as it backtracked on a decision to ban a Sadler's Wells poster of a naked man while insisting that another advertisement featuring a seductively smiling Venus was too risqué for travellers on the Tube.
A poster for a contemporary dance show portraying a nude man covering his modesty with a large cuckoo clock had previously been thought to breach the Underground's guidelines on nudity. Sadler's Wells said it had had to withdraw an ad for Insane in the Brain, a street dance version of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which opens at the Peacock Theatre on 27 February, because it was deemed potentially offensive to users of London Underground.
Its ban followed a similar decision by TfL to forbid the Royal Academy from previewing an exhibition with a poster showing Lucas Cranach the Elder's Venus.
Wearing nothing but her best necklace, a wisp of gauze and a foxy expression, Venus has been delighting connoisseurs for almost 500 years - but she has been banned from the underworld, as London Underground has decided she is likely to offend rather than enchant the capital's weary commuters.
She was intended as the main poster for the Royal Academy's show on the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, noted for his sensuous nudes despite his close friendship with religious reformer Martin Luther.
But the design has been thrown out as the poster, which was planned for display in scores of tube stations across London, was about to go to the printers.
Sexy Chinese Earthquake Models
Another controversial photoshoot. The art world seems to be pushing boundaries all the time. We've had the recent underage "art" photoshoot scandal will the Bill Henshaw Exhibition and justa few weeks back we've had a scandal with a topless 16 year old posing with a 15 year old published in a fashion mag.
Now its some Lifestyle travel magazine in China called: "New Travel Weekly" who sent in models into the Chinese Earthquake zone and had a sultry photoshoot amongst the rubble.
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