BILL HENSON, SELF-TITLED, UNVEILED

Bill Henson is back. Back at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, and back with a new exhibition of his unique photography.

But it is impossible to speak of this exhibition without first dismissing the elephant from the room; his previous exhibition here in 2008 that resulted in police seizing a number of photographs under highly spurious charges of pornography and child abuse.

The charges were subsequently dropped and the images returned but the media storm that surrounded the issue was unfortunately dominated by hysteria and fear-mongering, with only a smattering of reasoned debate.

Undoubtedly the huge turn-out at last Thursday night’s opening was both a testament of support for Henson – as Barry Humphries said, “If the Prime Minister detests it, I want to see it” – and curiosity about his next move.

Those expecting or wishing for controversy were sadly disappointed; those appreciative of Henson’s body of work over the last 35 years were rewarded. It consisted of 31 large format – 180 cm by 127 cm – photographs that could be easily divided into three categories: landscapes, architectural ruins, and the now familiar figurative images.

Painterly is the most common term used to describe Henson’s aesthetic; photographs that are heavily worked in the development and printing process by the artist who is as masterly in the dark room as he is on location.

Henson himself has said that the final printed product is often hard to recognise from the original negative, and for the technicians there is much to wonder about in his methods. But the end product evokes as many comparisons to classical painters as to his photographer colleagues.

The figurative images were fewer and more sculptural in the placement of limbs and hands, the looks on the models’ faces as furtive, distant and vulnerable as is Henson’s want. His discrete, very deliberate and minimal use of light remains his trademark. Be they rays of sunlight barely parting melancholy clouds at the break of day over a solitary landscape, or car headlights highlighting an adolescent body at night, there is more unseen, hinted at but unknown, than ever is revealed. Henson knows that much more is stated by a look in the eye than an exposed body. New here are a few studies of falling water, captured over just enough time to look more like spectral images floating in a landscape than water cascading in a fall.

Ultimately, across all his images is the sense of timelessness and intimacy that makes Henson an exceptional artist.

Bill Henson

Until June 5

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery