Bill Henson

In May this year, Bill Henson held his first exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley Gallery, in Sydney, for a very long time. The media liked to make out that it had been eight years. Perhaps they wanted to get it closer to the drama his work caused in 2008. There had been an uproar then about Henson’s use of under-age models and the photographer received the kind of fifteen minutes of fame that no artist really wants. In fact, Henson had simply wound down his showings. After the 2010 show at Roslyn Oxley, there had been another in 2012, one in Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne in 2011, and institutional shows through until 2014. “But – probably pure selfishness – I just got to a point where I felt I just wanted a bit of time, where I didn’t have to think about the next exhibition. And I was in a position to take the time. I just wanted to spend time in my studio and work on the pictures in there,” he explains.

Still pursuing love

Henson’s return to the front line of photography was met with approval. reviewer, Chloé Wolifson gave him perhaps the highest accolade any artists can be given in 2019. She wrote, “Layering light and pigment with a quality and scale alluding to noir cinema or Renaissance painting, Henson causes us to forget the little screen in our hands, just for a moment.” That’s no mean feat in a society that has a short-term memory when it comes to artists and a disdain for age. Henson is