I suppose it's only natural that this
debate will be divided into two camps -
those who will be against any restriction
of "artistic license" and those who will
defend the protection of children.

Art is such a subjective issue. And in this
case - it involves children - so its sure
to be even more emotive. However, The Australia
Council did invite opinions from a wide variety
of sources before coming up with the protocols.
They tried to collect a balance of many points
of view - and they did it with as balanced a
consultation as was possible. The Australia
Council has also committed to review the protocols
after the first 12 months of operation.

I'm sure that if during this time artists are dissatisfied
with what's being done - the media will hear of it soon
enough. The protocols are a condition of receiving
Australia Council funding - and for this reason alone,
the Council is entitled to impose its protocols - it
didn't have to consult anyone prior to doing so, but
the fact remains - that it did.

I don't see what else it could have done, and why the
storm in a teacup now?

I like your post 'zam.

There is so much that could be said about this topic and all the issues related to it.

The success of a lot of art nowadays depends on marketing and media strategy. I think there are a few examples around where people have taken the mickey out of pretentiousness and excesses of self-importance, where it exists, in the arts community - like someone having an elephant or a monkey paint and submitting them for critical review - the reviewers raved, not knowing the work was produced by zoo creatures.

Commercialization on one hand funds a lot of art that we all want to see and appreciate; on the other it cheapens a lot as well. For example, the UK and NY examples of scatalogical pics and sculptures that were successful recently; the fella who was squashing rats against canvas and so on - all so much theatrical nonsense and if it contributes anything to the cultural fabric it might be the sad testimony of what passes for creativity.

Long ago art production was carried out as a craft and as trade businesses with apprentices and assistants; artists worked their way towards artistic freedom meeting at least some standards along the way. Somewhere along the way we began to over value the publicity/ marketing of shock, and devalued the knowledge and skill foundation that one established before fame or notoriety.

As for the Bill Henson ilk; I think they should be charged with causing terminal boredom. To me he is just some old bloke with too much hobby time on his hands who learned how to press the button on a digital camera and market the (very predictable) results as 'cutting edge'. Personally I think the public is way past being 'shocked' with the same old fare

Shadow
Sorry this issue is beyond the antics of a politician to garner the conservative vote. Unlike Mad Monks crass attempt.

I'm taking about the principals on which you base your moral opinions.
Push the boundaries? of what? pornography?
banality ? If we don't have unbounded pornography we have cultural banality?

For your point to be valid/ make sense pornography has to be a means of political discourse. What was the political point Henson was making?
Pornography in art a la Henson is 'entertainment' and/or bad public manners. There are better ways to make a point.

Conversely Kim Phuc photographed fleeing her burning South Vietnamese village in 1972 is clearly the best way to show the horror terror etc.
www.bagofnothing.com/.../phan_thi_kim_phuc2.jpg

Kim Phuc's photo would hardly engender any sexual connotations but it's point is clear, Henson? in his case art is an excuse.

How do you legislate the difference? It has to be a balancing act
The article was about the practice of reasonable practices/process to achieve that.

Vocal minority ? who told you that? I must have missed that referendum.. perhaps you mean media polls?

How many ways do you want them discredited as being accurately representative of All the public.?

"Australia" was a dud because it was a mediocre melodrama. In the final analysis it says more about the skills/judgement of those who made it. And largely irrelevant to the topic.
Artist's if he accept government's largess it comes with public agendas they either get smart sell a better product or go elsewhere.
Governments are supposedly bound to represent the interests of the nation not pick winners. That's the purpose of private enterprise. Supply and demand!

Does anyone out there recognise the frightening hypocrisy of a society that willfully exposes children to the pornography of violence and prematurely sexualises children in the public arena, promotes distorted images of desirable body shapes, then beats up artists such as Bill Henson for representing the intensity and confusion of adolescence?

Rudd's response to Henson's work was visceral and unmediated by aesthetic distance. I might suggest that he was responding to the power of the images to represent what this society is doing to its children. That is, to my mind, the key issue here, and the primary concern is the warped constructs we have developed around human sexuality that create the sick minds of those who get caught up in child pornography.

There will always be a percentage of humans whose souls are so damaged they can rationalise and justify the evil they do, and those people need to be removed to a place where they can do less harm. But why should we all live in fear of the moral police for the sake of these few? What next? Are we going to put lap-laps on cherubs?

As a society, we need to address the daily small evils we do before we become as sick as them. We flood our children's senses with ugliness from the moment they are born. Don't you think its time to choose beauty instead? It is not artists the authorities should be moralising at, but the advertising industry and media that exploit and prematurely sexualise children for commercial ends.

Foxy,

I understand that the council does not require approval to apply this new censorship.

However, as it is funded almost entirely from the public purse, and constitutes the majority of art funding, it should not be in the position to make these moralistic judgements.

There is a similar case in the US where fundamentalist politicians have allowed federal funding for abstinence only sex education, in spite of huge evidence that it has no effect on teenage pregnancies, abortions, stds, etc.

Examinator,

I feel like I am wrestling with a pig again.

For example having seen Bill Henson's work, which is similar to much of the stuff he has being doing for decades, there were young children without clothes. However, there were no nipples, genitals, come hither looks or anything erotic.

Henson did not even consider that he was challenging any boundaries, it was simply that the boundaries of public opinion have moved.

Yet the blue rinse brigade, (Rudd incl) most of whom had never seen the photos, and who would not know art if it hit them between the eyes, automatically assumed: children + no clothes = child porn.

I have been to many of the art museums in Europe, and there are many art works from centuries ago that today's blue rinse brigade would declare pornographic.

I challenge anyone from the blue rinse brigade here, who has actually seen the actual art works (not just the tiny pics on the net) to tell us what he was trying to portray. I bet you that they are simply making judgements based on here say.