From my member subscription magazine. You can pay on the website to see the exhibition online but I think I'll wait to see it in a gallery space in the flesh.
Van Wyk, S, Bill Henson, May-June 2020, NGV Magazine Issue 22, NGV
Ive always loved Bill Henson since I saw one of his large images at the Art Gallery of South Australia. I even did an essay on this huge print for art history. Visually analysing it. Before I chose photography as my major.
But he is a photographer, and it turns out this Bill Henson guy is pretty well regarded. And now, from my town, from RMIT!! no less. So his work means even more to me now. The gallery guard years ago in SA told me to look up how this image is controversial. I have got to say I was disgusted at a) the police’s investigation, b) the public reaction and because of both c) the lame arse response by Roslyn Art Gallery, pulling the exhibition at the time, I think, hours before. Ironic, that they also represent Anthony Lister. How’s that working out for them? I think if you know somebody and believe in them, you stand by them.
I just can’t conceive of a sensitive, feeling artist (not even Lister) using their work to disguise an incredibly sick, sexual obsession with children. And I can't believe the gallery thought this possible.
So how wonderful to have supportive gallery talk to him about love, what DOES obsess him and the power of objects…as simply objects. That power of beauty itself.
‘The engine of all great art is love….a by product…or..of longing. The agent of love is beauty’. And it depends upon empathy.’ Yes it does. The words drip over me like honey….tempting me to my hone my craft. Be still, silent and consider.
‘(Beauty)…can’t be loved, but you can long for it.’ Clearly, this photographer is obsessed with articulating longing, beauty, something so sad and poignant but cuts through your soul simply by a visual. A photograph. My medium.