Bill Henson

By Carrie Miller

Bill Henson is often described as Australia’s most successful contemporary artist. This would be enough to pull a crowd to his latest solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. But as we are constantly reminded, Henson draws crowds for other reasons. His figurative works depict young people on the cusp of adolescence in ways that throw into relief the already ambiguous nature of this psychosexual developmental stage.

Henson has been making images like this for more than twenty years. And while it’s only fairly recently that his work has been viewed through a sexualised lens, what’s interesting is the way that both sides of the debate that’s heated up around his practice have lost sight of the work itself. This is a great opportunity for audiences to judge it for themselves by experiencing it directly. As the artist himself says: ‘everything we know of the world comes to us through our bodies’; ironically, it is a denial of this type of bodily knowledge that is perhaps at the heart of the Henson controversy on both sides.

Until October 13

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Paddington

www.roslynoxley9.com.au