| AUSTRALIAN
(NOT ONLY) BLACK & WHITE MAGAZINE (June/July 1999) LUX
ET NOX The work of internationally acclaimed Australian photographer Bill Henson represents a radical departure from much conventional photography. Born in Melbourne, Henson’s work glowed bright from the start with a one-person exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1975. “The infinite suggestiveness of the human face attentive to its own inner drama has preoccupied Henson since he began to photograph in the mid 1970s” says Isobel Crombie, Head of the Department of Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria. Major international exhibitions and survey shows in the 25 years since that National Gallery show have been held at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, as well installations in most major Australian museums. In 1995 Henson was chosen to represent Australia at the prestigious 46th Venice Biennale. In February 1999, Henson’s first exhibition in Los Angeles for 10 years met with remarkable commercial and critical success, resulting in invitations to exhibit in two major exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This group of new works at Australian ex-pat Karyn Lovegrove’s art gallery on the ‘Miracle Mile’ fill the space, the large-scale colour Type-C prints seductively carrying you into a nocturnal world. Henson produces images that are subtle, complex and illusive – something that has been repeatedly acknowledged by critics such as John McDonald (Sydney Morning Herald) who wrote “his pictures have an unsettling power because they take us into an unknown realm that exists just outside the margins of everyday life…..the ambiguities cannot be avoided, there is no fixed, correct reading of these works, no ready made set of themes.” Henson seems to create an isolated and insular setting, and viewed from the inside peering into an eerie blackness, the young subjects, far away from the possibility of prying eyes, seem to long simultaneously to grow up and to slip back into the dreamscape of childhood. An elegiac reflection upon contemporary youth culture the work recalls scenes from William Golding’s epic novel 'Lord of the Flies’, his visions of nameless youth, glimpses of depravation and unchecked experimentation are sunk in a nightmarish dream. Youngsters running wild beyond adult supervision - in a place where rebellious ceremony can become abusive ritual. As in ‘Lord of the Flies’, it is the symbolic mask that strikes us in Henson’s treatment of youth culture. The effect is to obscure a society torn by alienation and neglect, and to create a world in which existence is a state of consciousness that both stimulates wanton excess and the knowledge of its damage – a reverie that dissolves a sometimes harsh reality into the landscape of dreams and the imagination. Far from objectifying a voyeuristic sexual awakening, it is the viewer’s duty to offer our learned protection. Henson extends a lesson in humility and self-empowerment by allowing us to view the lurking menace, to fear his suggestive shadows. The darkness gives rise to claustrophobia and entrapment. Henson’s pictures suggest in this strangeness that lies beneath the mainstream of contemporary suburban culture “that second home where everything is innocent (2)” – suspended between a darkened suburban house and its iridescent green lawn, shadows create a black and threatening crevasse…the pale neon-lit face of a boy slips sideways into the night. Sometimes resembling film stills, the images in his photographic installations remain disjointed and arouse all manner of imaginative speculation - in the eerie stillness you get to decide their fate, to create their future. With a curious reservation and seaming detachment Henson’s muse captures a civilisation living on the other side of the tracks. Whether in the images of silent houses at night, the ominous shadows of a passing truck, or in these haunting portraits, life still appears dignified and possible, yet much like the symbolic life in the ‘Lord of the Flies’ with its stranded and alienated youth, beyond the predictable veneer of social convention lies darkness and chaos. Paradoxically it is this strange and unsettling dialogue between the portraits and landscapes that provides reassurance. For all the uncomfortable feelings we have been asked to share, it is Henson’s remarkable landscapes that in offering a silent meditation on the beauty of the night, radiate hope of a tomorrow full of promise, rescuing and rewarding the viewer for entering a mystical domain. 1 Gustav Mahler
- “Song of the Earth” 2 Robert Musil “The Man Without Qualities” |