capturemag.com.aupeople profile
[capture] sep_oct.19In May this year, Bill Henson held his first exhibition at the Roslyn
Oxley Gallery, in Sydney, for a very long time. The media liked to make
out that it had been eight years. Perhaps they wanted to get it closer to
the drama his work caused in 2008. There had been an uproar then
about Henson’s use of under-age models and the photographer received
the kind of fifteen minutes of fame that no artist really wants. In fact,
Henson had simply wound down his showings. After the 2010 show at
Roslyn Oxley, there had been another in 2012, one in Tolarno Galleries
in Melbourne in 2011, and institutional shows through until 2014. “But
- probably pure selfishness – I just got to a point where I felt I just
wanted a bit of time, where I didn’t have to think about the next
exhibition. And I was in a position to take the time. I just wanted to
spend time in my studio and work on the pictures in there,” he explains.
Still pursuing love
Henson’s return to the front line of photography was met with approval.
Sydney Morning Herald reviewer, Chloé Wolifson gave him perhaps the
highest accolade any artists can be given in 2019. She wrote, “Layering
light and pigment with a quality and scale alluding to noir cinema or
Renaissance painting, Henson causes us to forget the little screen in
our hands, just for a moment.” That’s no mean feat in a society that has
a short-term memory when it comes to artists and a disdain for age.
Henson is 63. It would have to be rewarding for any photographer to
know that they are still considered to be one of Australia’s most notable
leaders in contemporary photography.
Henson was nineteen when he was given his first solo exhibition. It
was held at the National Gallery of Victoria. That is no mean feat either.
His work is now held in museums and galleries throughout the world,
including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Bibliothèque National in Paris, the
DG Bank Collection in Frankfurt, the Sammlung Volpinum and the
Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, the Art Gallery of New South
Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, and National Gallery of Australia, to
name just a few.
For Henson, whose income derives from gallery sales, the shows are
marketing tools, but there is an emotional value attached to them. This
latest one is no different. Henson admits humbly, “It’s not that the
show means a lot to me as such. The fact that people are interested in
what I do is amazing to me, and it is something I don’t take for granted.
It has always been something that quietly dumbfounds me. None of us
is an island; we’re all a product of a place and time, but I’m not
consciously anticipating an audience when I’m making my pictures.
I’m just lost in my own world and following my own nose, so to speak.
So, for people to be interested for their own reasons – and it will be
different in every case – and getting something out of the work, is an
incredibly fortunate accident.”A “maker of things”
Henson is equally unassuming about his talent. “I’m not sure what
got me into photography in the beginning,” he states when asked.
“I drew and painted obsessively as a child. My mother used to tell
me I covered square miles of butcher’s paper with coloured pencils
and crayons. I was endlessly making things out of clay – I was never
interested in doing anything else.” He was accepted into tertiary art
college with a painting portfolio, but by then he had become, he
admits, completely preoccupied with photography. “All I can say
about it is that what I was trying to achieve was falling less short
through the medium of photography. Everything falls short, but my
photography seemed to be less emphatically a failure than working
in paint, even though I’d been able to get into Prahran College with
a bunch of paintings I’d done when I was thirteen. I still find
painting, both contemporary and historical, and music, and
sculpture and poetry and fiction, more compelling and more moving
than most photography. I would say that I’m a person who has
always made objects, things. It’s just that the things I make happen
to be photographs.”
Henson feels that he is a creator first and a photographer second.
“You have to be deeply in love with the medium. You have to have this
complete love and fascination and lust for the kind of medium you are
working in. But it is ultimately a means to an end. If I felt that I could
get closer to the things that haunt me or fascinate me by using a lump
of clay or a paintbrush, then I would do that,” he says.
The new work that Henson exhibited in May was characteristically
Henson. Arts reviewer, Nick Galvin, wrote, “The young, naked models
AL are still there, some posed solo, others in combination in the large-
L^ I
MAGES^ ©BILL
HENSON.^ C
OURTES
Y^ OF^ THEARTIST^ ANDROSL
YNOXLE
Y^9GALLERY
,^ SYDNEY.PREVIOUS
PAGE: Untitled
2000-01.
CL SH440 N9A
Type C
photograph
127 x 180 cm
Edition of 5 +
AP 2