Art Censorship in Australia

Public pressure has forced a Sydney gallery to cancel the opening night of an exhibition featuring photographs of naked 12 and 13 year olds..

The exhibition, by Australian photographer Bill Henson, was scheduled to open at Roslyn Oxley9 gallery.

However, a note on the door advised patrons the official opening would not go ahead.

A gallery spokeswoman told AAP the exhibition would proceed, but public criticism of tonight's event forced organisers to cancel the official opening.

Police tonight said an investigation into the exhibition was in its early stages.

Hetty Johnston, founder and executive director of Bravehearts, a child sexual assault action group, today called for Henson and the gallery to be prosecuted over the images.

The gallery's website had also featured the images from the exhibition, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) confirmed it had received a formal complaint and are investigating. The images have now been removed from the website.

Earlier this month, there was another 'outrage' following the publication of images showing a topless 16-year-old model sharing a bath with a 15-year-old male model in Russh Australia magazine.

The Classification Board ruled the magazine was not a submittable publication and therefore does not need to be classified.

Police said they expect to file charges over a Sydney art exhibition that the Australian prime minister called revolting for its portrayal of nude 12- and 13-year-old children.

The exhibit by leading Australian photographer Bill Henson was suspended by police just ahead of its scheduled opening Thursday night, following public outrage.

Police removed more than 20 photographs from the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery on Friday.

Police are investigating this matter and it is likely that we will proceed to prosecution on the offense of publishing an indecent article under the Crimes Act, said Local Area Commander Allan Sicard. He would not specify who was likely to be charged.

Henson and the gallery agreed Thursday to temporarily suspend the show to allow investigators to speak to the children and their parents, police said. Henson's exhibition consisted of 41 photographs.

The Web site for the gallery went off-line to remove the photos. It was back online Friday afternoon, with a statement saying the exhibition will reopen without the controversial images.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd weighed in on the issue during a morning interview on Nine Network television: I find them absolutely revolting, he said when showed the photographs: Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff — frankly I don't think there are any — just allow kids to be kids.

Henson's work is on display in all of Australia's major art galleries and also forms part of collections in New York's Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and other venues.

Betty Churcher, former director of the National Gallery of Australia, says debate sparked by a Bill Henson exhibition is misguided.

Twenty of Henson's photographs, featuring a naked girl under the age of 16, were confiscated during a police raid on Sydney's Roslyn Oxley9 gallery late last week.

Police are considering whether to lay criminal charges against those involved with the exhibition, which was condemned by many - including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

But Ms Churcher has defended Henson's shots, saying they are works of art and depict a sense of innocence: There is absolutely no suggestion of pornography in these photographs. They are breathtakingly beautiful, they are about the vulnerability of life.

The National Gallery of Victoria is at the centre of a third investigation surrounding controversial artist and photographer Bill Henson.

Henson's work is under investigation after about 20 photographs of naked teenagers were confiscated from a Sydney art gallery last week.

The images depicted the teens in a number of different poses, with police receiving complaints over the planned exhibition.

The National Gallery of Victoria also has a number of Henson's photos with police yesterday attending the gallery to assess the works, News Limited newspapers report.

However police did not remove any of the photographs.

Police are now likely to investigate whether the photos breach pornography or indecency laws.

While the photos have sparked varied levels of community outrage, artists have labeled the police investigation as a "witch hunt" and " overbearing political correctness".

A gallery spokesman said that Henson was one of the greatest photographers of our time.

High-profile Opposition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull has spoken out in defence of artistic freedom after revealing that he owns works by controversial photographer Bill Henson.

The Opposition treasury spokesman say  he has two of the artist's photographs - one depicting a face in profile and the other of a sunset.

New South Wales police are considering laying charges against Henson after they raided a Sydney exhibition of his work, which included a photograph of a naked 13-year-old girl.

Turnbull says he has not seen the controversial photographs but says artists should be able to express themselves freely: I don't believe that we should have policemen invading art galleries. I think we have a culture of great artistic freedom in this country.

We've got to be very careful. Freedom is a very precious thing. And before we have policemen tramping through art galleries, tramping through libraries, going into newspapers offices, we've got to think, freedom is what makes this country great. That is what enables us to be the type of nation we are.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has described the photographs as absolutely revolting but Greens Senator Bob Brown says Rudd does not understand art.

Senator Brown has compared the furore to censorship in Soviet Russia: I think the Prime Minister and others have overreacted and have not been very judicious in their use of words or their understanding of creative art and what it gives to society. You have to wonder whether the next thing is we're going to have people pointing out children on the beach who aren't fully clad and having that forbidden on beaches."

The debate over photographer Bill Henson's controversial pictures of nude 12- and 13-year-olds continues in Australia.

Cate Blanchett, along with Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, and writer Larissa Behrendt, has signed an open letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urging him to rethink his stance on the photographs, which he called "absolutely revolting."

The open letter argues that Henson's work itself is not pornographic, even though it includes depictions of naked human beings. It is more justly seen in a tradition of the nude in art that stretches back to the ancient Greeks, and which includes painters such as Caravaggio and Michelangelo.

Blanchett joined 42 other leading arts figures in signing the open letter slamming Rudd.

A number of Henson's former models have also stepped forward to voice support for the photographer via the Sydney Morning Herald.

Online photographs used by media websites to report the investigation into Bill Henson have been referred to the Classification Board, the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, said.

Canberra police were also assessing 79 Henson photographs at the National Gallery of Australia, some of which were seized as the investigation into the artist widened and owners of works, including Parliament House, were questioned by phone.

Several online images of Bill Henson photographs from media websites reporting on the exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Sydney have been referred to the Classification Board, Debus said.

The images were referred to the board by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which investigates complaints about online content.

They do not involve content published online by the Oxley gallery as the gallery voluntarily removed images from its website last week, Debus said. He would not name the news sites.

While several Canberra galleries have been investigated, only the National Gallery had Henson photos featuring naked children. The National Portrait Gallery in Canberra owns three Henson works.

Australian police, encouraged by ongoing denunciations of artist/photographer Bill Henson by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, New South Wales (NSW) Premier Morris Iemma and a small group of right-wing commentators, have ramped up their witch-hunt of the internationally-acclaimed artist following the seizure of 20 of his photographs from a Sydney art gallery last week.

NSW police are currently threatening Henson and the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery owners with prosecution under a recently introduced section of the NSW Crimes Act, which covers the production, dissemination and possession of child pornography. If found guilty, the artist could be jailed for a maximum of 10 years and the gallery owners for five years. The accusation of child pornography against Henson, who is represented in major galleries around the world, is ludicrous.

Henson has more than 250 photographs in state-funded Australian galleries. However, since Prime Minister Rudd'
s declaration on national television that the artist/photographer'
s work was “absolutely revolting”, the police have begun visiting local venues to intimidate curators and dictate what they can or cannot display.

NSW police officers told the Albury Regional Gallery that unless it took down several Henson photographs and removed images from its web site, it could be prosecuted. Three days later police raided Newcastle Regional Art Gallery and “advised” management to take down some Henson photographs—one of which was in a staff room and not even on public display.

Police have also visited Melbourne'
s National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Although no photos were removed from these prestigious galleries, the purpose of the visit was clear. National Gallery of Australia director Ron Radford was questioned by police over the gallery'
s collection of 79 Henson photographs, despite the fact that the pictures were all in storage.

If we determine there are offences disclosed, then we will go through the process of seizing whatever needs to be seized in order to prove the offence, a police spokesperson told the media. If you'
re in possession of child pornography, whether you have it on your computer and whether you view it or not, that'
s an offence.

Online media outlets reporting the witch-hunt and using digital versions of Henson'
s photographs could also be prosecuted after they were referred this week to the federal censorship authorities by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which investigates complaints about internet content. In this coercive atmosphere, the publishers of Art World, a new art magazine, were forced to pulp 25,000 copies of its June-July issue. The magazine featured a cover story on Henson and contained photos of the naked girl that prompted the police raid of the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. The survival of the bimonthly magazine, which only began publishing three months ago, has been jeopardised by the additional $100,000 required to reprint the edition.

Artists challenge Rudd

Not a single elected Labor politician—state or federal—has opposed this escalating assault. On the contrary, appeals by leading members of the artistic community—many of whom had been recent supporters of Rudd—have been arrogantly rejected by the Labor government and attacked by radio shock-jocks and a collection of thuggish media commentators.

On May 27, for example, actor Cate Blanchett and 42 other leading writers, dramatists, filmmakers, musicians and artists issued an open letter to the prime minister. The letter rejected allegations that Henson'
s work was child pornography and called on Rudd and Premier Iemma to “rethink” their previous comments.

The courts, the letter declared, were not the “proper place” to debate the merit of Henson'
s work. If those demanding charges against the artist were not pushed back there would be further attacks, which would, in turn, encourage a repressive climate of hysterical condemnation, backed by the threat of prosecution.

We are already seeing troubling signs in the pre-emptive self-censorship of some galleries, it continued. This is not the hallmark of an open democracy nor of a decent or civilised society. We should remember that an important index of social freedom, in earlier times or in repressive regimes elsewhere in the world, is how artists and art are treated by the state.

The letter called on the Minister for Arts and former Midnight Oil rock singer Peter Garrett to stand up for artists against the encroaching censorship, which has resulted in the closure of this and other exhibitions.

Rudd arrogantly dismissed the appeal a day after it was published and told the media that his opinion about Henson'
s photographs was unchanged . The issue, he continued, would be decided through the legal processes of the land.

Not surprisingly, arts minister Garrett simply ignored the open letter. On the same day, NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, echoing Rudd, told a Sydney radio station that Henson'
s photographs were “offensive” and “objectionable” and fully endorsed their seizure by his officers. And on May 29, Rupert Murdoch'
s Australian newspaper published a letter from so-called child protection activist Hetty Johnson, declaring that she was “committed” to bringing Henson and the gallery owners to trial.

Extreme right demands more attacks

Right-wing commentators are now celebrating Rudd'
s denunciations of Henson and fulminating against anyone who comes forward to defend freedom of artistic expression. Those challenging the censorship are accused of supporting or providing sustenance to pedophiles.

This was spelled out in an op-ed piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, by columnist Paul Sheehan on May 26. Under the headline, Artists crying out for martyrdom, he declared that Australia'
s artistic community was the equivalent of a claustrophobic, reactionary one-party state,” which was providing sustenance to “pederasts and child sexploiters.

Sheehan suggested, however, that the issue was broader and that the real problem was Australia'
s privacy laws, artistic licence, freedom of expression, and Aboriginal rights , which, he said, were helping to mask, exacerbate or even rationalize, child sex abuse. He concluded with a threat: while the Bill Henson exhibition may be the wrong time and wrong place for this particular battle ... it is the right time and right place to reinvigorate this particular war.

In other words, the war on fundamental democratic rights should not be confined to Henson.

Sheehan'
s rhetoric is chillingly reminiscent of the language and anti-democratic measures that led to the Nazi book burnings and the Nazis'
 characterisation of virtually all modernist art as Entartete Kunst or Degenerate Art. The fact that it is published unchallenged in what passes as Sydney'
s “small l”-liberal daily, and encouraged by the Rudd government'
s endorsement of the current witch-hunt, should be taken a serious warning to artists, intellectuals and all working people.

Rudd and the rest of the Labor leadership have seized on the Henson issue as a diversion from mounting social tensions resulting from the rapid rise in the cost of living and growing hostility—just six months after its election—to the Labor government. Like the Howard government before it, Rudd Labor is trying to develop a political constituency among the extreme right, Christian fundamentalists and other disoriented layers to use as a means of intimidating and suppressing critical thought, as it ramps up its assault on the social conditions of the working class.

The age of overzealous risk management and fear of upsetting the most sensitive of minds hit the West Australian arts community this week when an innocent photograph of two children without t-shirts was pulled from an exhibition.

Perth photographer Nicole Boenig-McGrade shot two young children pottering about on a typically Australian street for the exhibition entitled Kids in Suburbia . She captured an image of childish activity that takes place in most suburbs every day.

The library manager charged with overseeing the exhibition in the Subiaco Library deemed the image too controversial to be hung.

Prominent arts figures said the image was no different from that screened on countless nappy advertisements on television. Many questioned just what kind of a nanny state WA was becoming.

The decision was taken following the 'furore' artist Bill Henson ignited when he showed an image of a naked 13-year-old girl at a Sydney exhibition last year.

Perth artists and gallery owners today questioned whether an arts specialist, instead of a bureaucrat, should have made the decision to pull the photo. The black and white picture by Boenig-McGrade shows a boy and a girl, both wearing pants, playing with chalk and a bucket on a suburban footpath.

This morning the Subiaco Council reinstated the image in the exhibition. Deputy mayor Andrew McTaggart admitted the decision to pull the photograph was erring too far on the side of caution.

United Galleries director Robert Buratti said it was a gallery's responsibility to be mindful of upsetting audiences.

Art Monthly Australia , the magazine criticised by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last year for carrying a photo of a nude schoolgirl on its cover, has published more naked images to test the Government's guidelines aimed at protecting children.

But editor Maurice O'Riordan said the three pictures of nude girls had been found to comply with the Australia Council's children in art protocols, even though they were starker than last year's image.

The protocols demand that naked images of children be considered by the Classification Board to ensure they are not obscene. Anyone who photographs children needs parental permission before the pictures can be exhibited and must declare the photographs did not involve exploitation of the subject.

The full-frontal photographs - taken from an American book and exhibition, The Century Project , by Frank Cordelle - are used to illustrate a review of David Marr's book, The Henson Case , about last year's controversy over a Sydney exhibition by photographer Bill Henson that included images of pubescent girls.

Both the Henson photographs and the image used by Art Monthly Australia last year - a photograph by Polixeni Papapetrou of her six-year-old daughter, Olympia - were given an unrestricted rating by the classification board.

O'Riordan described Papapetrou's photograph as more demure because of the lighting than Cordelle's images in the latest edition, which he said were more suited to a documentary: It was important for us to test the protocols because we are funded by the Australia Council. He had not considered putting Cordelle's photographs on the cover because he said even the arts community appeared divided over the use of Papapetrou's image.

Watching the smouldering ruins of the Henson bonfire in the past few months, I've had reason to recall the old ambassador's wisdom. The transition from Howard to Rudd has seen not much change from the social caution of the old era. The liberals inside Labor are almost as embattled as they were inside the Coalition. That Rudd is, as we were warned, very, very conservative involves more than maintaining the American alliance. It also means continuing to promise fearful Australians protection from the excesses of art, film, television and now, above all, the internet.

As the year drags to a close, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is fine-tuning a regime of internet censorship unique in the democratic world. Under direction from Rudd, the Australia Council is drafting protocols that will tie in bureaucratic knots any artist dealing with children and present extraordinary obstacles to their work being put on the net. And the nation's attorneys-general are roaming the outskirts of censorship law to try to crack down on images of naked children. Kevin Rudd's Australia is in a funk over art and kids.

...Read full article

Australian painters and photographers will no longer be able to rely on a defence of artistic merit defence under an overhaul of child pornography laws.

Nearly two years after police raided Melbourne artist Bill Henson's contentious exhibition, the Government will legislate to force artists to account for their works.

A working party set up by the Government in the wake of the May, 2008, controversy over Henson's child exhibits has recommended the artistic-merit defence be struck out.

The group, comprising Department of Public Prosecutions, police and Legal Aid representatives, was instructed to draw a clear line between pornography and art.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that New South Wales Attorney-General John Hatzistergos strongly supports the move, and the Government is expected to legislate when parliament resumes next month.

Henson triggered one of the most intense debates in the art world when he featured an image of a naked 12-year-old girl on the invitation to an exhibition of his work at Sydney's Roslyn Oxley Gallery. Police shut down the exhibition and seized 32 of Henson's pictures, but Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, QC, declined to prosecute Henson.

Hatzistergos said the proposed laws would cover the production, distribution and possession of child pornography: The fact that it is art cannot be used as a defence. The report recommends that once such material has been found to be unlawfully pornographic, whether or not it is intended to be art is irrelevant, he said.

The working party, headed by District Court judge Peter Berman, also examined the use of photographs depicting nudity in a news context. Hatzistergos said the new laws would ensure the rights of photographers to publish pictures - such as the iconic Vietnam war photograph of a nine-year-old girl running naked on a street after being burned by napalm - would not be infringed.

The Government will seek feedback from victims' groups, the artistic community and media before putting the recommendations to Cabinet.

The working party has also recommended the law be changed so jury members, prosecutors and court staff are able to view only a sample of images during the trial process.

After her exhibition was closed and her house raided by police, the Archibald Prize-winning artist Cherry Hood made a pivotal decision. She would no longer depict nude children but would concentrate on portraits instead. About a decade on, she has never returned to the subject that provoked the police action.

The works were of naked girls aged about four upwards, onto which she painted penises. They were a comment on gender stereotyping, a theme that has long concerned Hood. All the images of girls were photographs in freely available publications.

Her case is outlined in The Art Censorship Guide , just published by the National Association for the Visual Arts. It is a reminder that action against artists has a long history in Australia.

But Hood's decision to change her art practice is one many artists are facing in the wake of the Bill Henson controversy, according to NAVA's executive director, Tamara Winikoff. The introduction a year ago of Australia Council guidelines for working with children has increased the pressure on artists to steer away from contentious subjects.

It's meant that people who may not have taken any notice have now become self-conscious, Winikoff says. It means that the critical role that art can play is being silenced.

NAVA's guide argues that the visual arts are the prime target for censors and zealots. It provides information about threats to artistic freedom and how to deal with them, outlining the existing laws, the role of key bodies including the Classification Board, and provides advice on what to do if the police call.

The 100-page guide encourages artists to speak up if a work is censored or restricted or if an artist is intimidated.

No Australian artist has been found guilty of exploiting or harming children within their art practice as far as NAVA is aware. Existing laws are adequate and the Australia Council guidelines are having a chilling effect on the making and distributing of images of children, Winikoff says: Perfectly legitimate images of children are disappearing from the public domain because everybody is too nervous, she says.

Australia is planning on forcing artists who create images of nude children to pay a fee of $500 per image to have them classified by the government as genuine art and not child pornography.

The removal of the so-called artistic purpose defense is one part of across-the-board changes to child pornography laws announced by Attorney-General John Hatzistergos that were spurred nearly two years ago by the case of artist Bill Henson, whose photo exhibit featuring images of naked children sparked intense debate throughout the country. Despite being later approved by the classification board, the case highlighted the need for more clarity with respect to images of child sexual abuse.

The new definition will encompass what is termed child abuse material, said Hatzistergos. That means it covers depictions that reasonable persons would, in all the circumstances, regard offensive.

Those depictions, he said, would include where the person is a child who is a victim [of] cruelty, physical abuse, the child is engaged or is apparently engaged in a sexual pose or sexual activity. It also will apply when the child is in the presence of someone engaging in any of these activities or where the private parts of the person [who] appears to be a child are shown.

A photograph of a partly naked prepubescent girl by internationally renowned photographer Jan Saudek was removed from the Ballarat International Foto Biennale on the eve of its opening.

Biennale director Jeff Moorfoot said he understood a woman went to the Orwellian sounding Office of the Child Safety Commissioner, Tourism Victoria and the local council to complain that the 1995 Saudek work, Black Sheep & White Crow , which she had seen in an ad promoting the exhibition in Art Almanac, depicted a mother prostituting her child.

Moorfoot said the council and tourism agency warned him that a controversy surrounding the image could imperil funding, even though Saudek's works were in a separate room with a warning at the door that they contained adult content.

Moorfoot said: No one's said 'take the work off the wall or else'.  [...BUT... they said] 'if this goes to the ministerial level, chances are we won't fund the next festival'.