Design Federation

First Bill Henson, Now Polixeni Papapetrou

Art Monthly Australia has created some controversy this month with their latest issue featuring a naked girl on the cover.

Given that Bill Henson’s Photographs were given a G rating by the classification office, what are we to make of these new images by Polixeni Papapetrou?

According to Dr Martin Jolley, who is head of photography at the Australian National University and co-authors an article in this months Art Monthly about Bill Henson

“We aren’t going to let the tabloid media … dictate what we can and can’t show and we are not going to let politicians, who are always wanting to jump on populist bandwagons dictate what we can and can’t show.”

Someone needs to tell that to Morris Dilemma.

- David Goldberg

Screening tonight on ABC at 10pm will be a documentary about Bill Henson, entitled “The Art of Bill Henson”. Originally scheduled to air on Sunday Arts, the ABC has made a saavy move to keep up with the hype and instead has brought it forward. So if you know nothing about Bill Henson then its a great opportunity to see for yourself.

As a preface, click the image below to read this article from the Sunday Telegrapahs May 18th edition.

What a week(end) it has been for the art community in Australia. We haven’t had this much publicity since Ken Done was declared bankrupt, and all for the wrong reasons. It all started when what promised to be rather low key affair at the Roslyn Oxley Gallery, instead turned into the mother of all publicity juntas.
An Artist that (quite sadly) the general public would know next to nothing about (Internationally renowned Photographer Bill Henson) has turned into Australia’s answer to Guillermo Habacuc Vargas because of his latest photographic exhibition. Now the previous article on this site by Sy Rogers has created some excellent articulate discussion for both sides of the argument, but I wanted to come at this from a different angle.

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Since the dawn of the civilised world, humankind has been asking the question What is art? This week has prompted many Australians to ask the same question, with the controversy surrounding Bill Henson’s latest photographic exhibition.

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