From the perspective of one who has worked on the SA Classification of Publications Board. Argues that censorship is becoming increasingly unmanageable due to two trends which are detailed in the article. Also argues that public debate (with the exception of child pornography) in the media has declined. In contrast there is rising debate about sacrilege.
Gone from Carrick Hill before it became a public collection are three Stanley Spencer erotic paintings and William Dobell's 'The Duchess Disrobes' (two versions). Smith examines the nature of the collection of works by Sir Edward and Lady Ursula Haywood.
Women need to fight for an alternative pornography. Women need a pornography that addresses all the alternatives of our sexuality, in every format, so that there's something for everyone....Farmer interviewed porn star Lydia Lunch on her visit to the MRC in Adelaide.
Photography has inspired more hysteria and censorship than paintings .... examines the situation in Perth Western Australia with child pornography and the photographs of Concetta Petrillo.
Analysis of some of Andy Warhol's early works to demonstrate a direct link between his art and the homoerotic magazines which the author found in his Time Capsules in the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA.
Explores the nature of censorship, how it is applied and the consequences of repression in artistic expression. Analyses the issues from a feminist perspective. "Censorship is about as effective as prohibition". Examines the censorship applied to the exhibition by Jasmine Hirst.
Editorial: hypocrisy in our attitude to sex. It is both celebrated and maligned, and the censorship laws allow young people to view explicit violence while classifying sex for adults only, based on psuedo-scientific analysis of 'normal' or 'aberrant'. This history of public attitude from the Enlightenment on, libertinism a radical opposition to status quo, advertising and porn, and artists exercising self-censorship.
Explores the 'pornographic' in the public domain. Art isn't an excuse for pornography, because pornography simpy exists. Art has remained a realm within which a vast range of ideas can be explored and tested. There are no questions of ethics or morality in art. This starts to get more exciting as art gets closer to life.
Porn is a safety valve, big business, a cabinet of curiosities, a staging theatre for many contradictions and inversions: male submission, female dominance, intricate identity and gender crossings, and the validity of female desire. Pleasure is misunderstood in a society where is commodified, exchanged and consumed displaced into food, wine, cars....Discusses the works of Jane Burton, Mary Fallon, Catherine Mackinnon, Marcia Pally and W.H.Auden.
Ecologies of Place and Memory (Lauren Berkowitz, Rosemary Burke, Torquil Canning, Lola Greeno, Ruth Hadlow, Sieglinde Karl and Louise Weaver)
Time & Tide (Rowena Gough, Gay Hawkes, Lin Li, Pilar Rojas and Catherine Truman)
Both curated by Bridget Sullivan
Plimsoll Gallery, Centre for the Arts, Hobart
May 22 - June 14 (Ecologies)
June 19 - July 12 (Time)