info anyone? etcetera

oh i wanted to go to this.

aaaaarrrrgg!!! where was this??

it would be at the ian potter gallery at fed square.

I went there.. couldnt see it

It wasnt happening at Torlano's either

Sure it wasn't a Jim Henson exhibition?

shuddup!

sorry wrong venue, wrong exhibition. don't know. anything.

yea. Think I will.

it should be tolarnos.

Bill Henson Nov 03 - Dec 09,2006

but it would have been last night surely. They have the party the day before it's open to general public.

yeah.. well it was shut when I got there at 6:30

oh well...

the art on the walls looked amazingly ummm...dark.. and ..errr.. featureless

So, I take it you're a bit partial to a bit of Ol' Bill Henson, Ben. Can't fault that, really.

Naaa.. he's overratted to hell!!*

I just wanted to drink his free wine and dine on his art dealer's vou-lu-vents (tucker)

*this statement might not be the true belief of it's author

I like Bill Henson's stuff.

yeah me too

twas probably last night

anybody seen his new stuff yet?

yes.

he's got a new young model. she's very pretty. I'm wondering if the nipple rings are fake.

there's more in your face nudity. it raised my eyebrows.

generally good. some great landscapes and some container ships at sea.

he must be raking it in. Photos are $15,000 - $18,000 and quite a few pics have sold five or six copies.

you can get them cheaper at joel auction house, there are some left ffrom the recent sales

ooh. i might have a look at them japan.

I think they will always be too expensive for me tho.

that's fucked, those kids should switch to diesel and get more mileage.

you're right juice, but the guy does have a pedo beard.

The recent resurfacing of two early-career photographs by Bill Henson on the secondary market (initially picked up by Corrie Perkin, in The Australian), and the publishing of another disturbing photograph from the same period in a local art market magazine (the Australian Art Review), may throw fresh doubts upon vigorous art milieu assertions of Henson's disinterested gaze and the aesthetic intentions underpinning his decades-long preocupations with prepubescent, pubescent and adolescent nudes.

At the risk of seeming dense, I don't get the point of that article.

When this is done, much is revealed about the gratuitousness of Henson’s transgressive praxis - at least around 1985/86 - that could not by any stretch be described as unequivocally aesthetic in intention.

What?

There really isn't much that's actually newsworthy in Australia if this keeps coming up, obviously

The point is Block, that the anonymous author of the piece is saying that Henson's work is and always has been pornographic, and the art community is having the wool pulled over its collective eyes.

But it's masquerading as hard fact instead of opinion. As if you can't possibly argue against them without being a pedo yourself.

and of course it's anonymous because the person is not a big enough person to actually come out and say that themselves, but only anonymously on the internet

yeah, i don't know who wrote it. i had a look at one of the linked images in the piece from 1985 though, and it did seem a lot more questionable compared to his current stuff which i don't have an issue with at all. i would say that if that was the image which all the debate is over, i'd probably agree with the people who wanted his work removed. if the image was of an under 16 girl which was what i assume, again, not based on details known.

Yeah, I thought that's what they were getting at, but it's rather veiled.
And the praxis is too transgressive for me.

For all we know, Bill Henson is attracted to children. There's no way to know. I know enough 'artists' who think whatever they create justifies anything they do to other people. Meh.

i went to this menzies auction viewing last month and my friend made me laugh when she said this bill henson picture looked like it came directly from an article like fhm's top 50 sexiest aussie athletes:

http://www.menziesartbrands.com/cgi/dmcat.cgi?rm=displaylot&itemid=14996

yeh it does look like a fhm shot. the one after it not so much.

true dat

would i get banned if i posted it in this thread? be a hell of a way to go out...

Yo, what else needs to happen for everyone to call ''bullshit'' on all this?

Evidence of henson's slice of the royalties from Marr's book sales? An IOU?

Fucking hell

''Hi, I'm David Marr. I have a SHOCKING revelation that the Tele will pick up. And you can read more about it in my NEW BOOK on the HORRIBLE AFFAIR!''

Meh.

(Of course, I wouldn't mind reading it. Gah.)

Miranda Devine is horrible, but I think she might just be on to something here... god, I feel repulsed at myself for saying that.

I agree.

Marr's bullshit in that interview - on one hand acknowledging the free range which the internet has given to image distribution; on the other claiming that 'it's just a photograph' - just makes him and the wanky concepts he's defending come across as even less worthy of another microsecond in the public eye.

If holding that view makes me, as Devine suggested this week, a philistine in the eyes of the ''art'' world, then I'll wear that tag with pride.

Bill Henson: ''Yeah. so I went into a school perving for fresh skin. God, what's the big deal?''

World: screams

David Marr on every media outlet possible: ''Gee, look at them overreacting again. Unbelievable. I guess you'll just have to read my NEW BOOK to find out more!!''

I went and saw David Maher speak tonight at the Nova theatre... it was good.

Maher started by disclosing that what he says in the book about Henson finding 'tallent' at schools, was actually reported in the Good Weekend mag.. or something similar about 4 years ago. And rightfully it wasnt a storm in a teacup then.

His discussion about the ''wanking factor'' was pretty good in debunking censorship of this type... which in a nutshell says that if you ban anything that people/someone/somewhere might wank over.. then you have to ban almost everything... including Target kids clothing catalogues, business suit adds, photos of feet...etc

David Marr feels 'terrible' over Bill Henson row, vows to make amends by writing new, best-selling book about the experience