our local rag
Last night at a commercial gallery in Paddington the police arrived lights flashing moments before an opening and shut down a show of Bill Henson photographs after a burn the artist frenzy started by the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago. I can’t remember this happening ever before. Sure, there are things I’ve heard about in the prehistorical 60s & 70s and plenty of more recent “controversies”, (piss christ for instance) but nothing like this. That we don’t have the cultural bandwidth to accomodate that art might discomfort and confront us without feeling the need to put the artist responsible in jail is fairly sad. This morning the smh has plastered across the top of its site the happy news that our glorious leader Mr Rudd agrees with them and is “disgusted”. I can’t be bothered to link to the story.
