Once shunned for his shocking photographs, Bill Henson’s work is now being celebrated in multiple galleries around Australia. The contemporary photographer continues to push boundaries and showcase work that he enjoys making.
Bill Henson: Festival of Photography presents recent works by celebrated photographer Bill Henson. The artist selected a series of portraits, nudes, lush museum interiors and transcendent landscapes. The twenty-three images showcased in this exhibition are from 2008- 2011 and continue to show Henson’s signature style.
The exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria opened on March 10, 2017 and is open to the public until August 27, 2017. His major solo exhibition opens the NGV Festival of Photography; the largest contemporary photography display in the gallery’s history. The show is all about encouraging critical thinking and getting Melbourne’s contemporary artists to think outside of the box and resist the urge to create generalised art.
Over the past forty years Henson has developed his own style of studying the human condition. His controversial style of photographing and way of finding his models has been questioned many times but action was taken against him in 2008 that resulted in some of his work being seized by police. Read more about this in FIB’s 10 of the Most Controversial Fashion Photographers Ever here.
This exhibition at the NGV is Henson’s first in a largely publicly funded gallery to include adolescent nudes since the incident in 2008. He states:
“I am quite comfortable with the fact that my pictures happen to disturb people.”
You can visit Henson’s exhibition within Level 2, 19th-20th C Art & Design Galleries at NGV International.
