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.
Curated by Neville John O'Neill for the Canberra Contemporary Art Space.
Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide
10 July - 16 August 1998
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.
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.
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.
The artist writes about her interest in feminism and much of what is written seems intrinsically fetishistic. Her aim was to try to create a democratic, woman friendly fetish language.
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.