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15/11/2013

Bill Henson

Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

"What is that face, breaking our hearts, but a momentary configuration of molecules taking form and changing form and losing form, as night falls?"
Peter Schjeldahl, Impressions of Henson, 1989

Widely regarded as one of Australia’s most important and influential photographers, Bill Henson’s remarkable early work has made a profound contribution to the cultural life of the country.

Produced when he was 31, the Untitled 1985/86 photographs are a valuable document of suburban Melbourne.

More than that, as Terence Maloon noted in1987, when Bill Henson embarked on his project of photographing the suburbs, he felt compelled to 'treat the landscape as if it were a dreamscape'. Mostly shot at dawn or dusk, the Untitled 1985/86 sequence with its glimpses of faces, figures and places marks the moment when Bill Henson's long-held desire to find a form for ‘the dream of suburbia’ was realised.

At their first showing in November 1987 at Realities Gallery, it was evident to many that Henson's large twilight photographs had captured a fragile and fleeting time, poised between day and night, a state of mind in which the separation of our dreams from reality becomes more difficult.

The following year these works were included in Elsewhere, an exhibition of photo-based work from Australia at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. In 1990 they featured in Passages de l'image at the Pompidou Centre. Presenting the most recent trends in current photography, film and video this landmark exhibition included works by Bill Viola and Jeff Wall. In that same year works from this series were also exhibited in Amsterdam and Strasbourg.

The photographs of Bill Henson are imbued with a tender, hopeless nostalgia which lend them their 'pensive' saturnine charm. But they also embody the dream of the photograph as carrier of a vision ... Henson's images are realistic ... but are intentionally robbed of all realistic features ...

With their rich tone and palette, Henson's beautiful 1985/86 color photographs continue to be compared to paintings. These images of the light and landscape of Melbourne, of softly lit faces of people in shopping malls and of fragmented architectural details are widely known through reproduction.

This exhibition features a selection of photographs brought together to celebrate the 26th anniversary of their first showing. They have been printed from the original film using digital technology. Included are prints from the series that have not been shown since the 80s. They are installed, as they were originally, without frame or glass at Realities Gallery and as they were presented at the Centre Pompidou.

The looking is easy, wrote David Malouf in 1988. But seeing is another matter.

The central subject never quite declares itself, and it takes us a little time to realize that the real subject may be the act of looking itself, which is perhaps why the really striking feature of so many of the figures here is the quality of their gaze.

Biography:
Born in Melbourne, Bill Henson had his first solo exhibition, at the age of 19, at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1975. Since then he has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally. In 1995 he represented Australia at the Venice Biennale with his celebrated series of cut-screen photographs.

In 2003 his work appeared in Strangers: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International Center of Photography, New York.

A major survey of his work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria in 2005. This landmark exhibition attracted record visitor numbers for a contemporary art exhibition in Australia. The following year he exhibited a major body of work in Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Bill Henson’s work is held in every major public collection in Australia. Overseas collections include Auckland Art Gallery, Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Denver Art Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Sammlung Volpinum, Vienna, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, 21C Museum, Louisville, Victoria and Albert Museum , London and Tate, London.

Major monographs: Bill Henson Photographs with essays by David Malouf and Michael Heyward was published by Picador in 1988. Lux et Nox (2002) and Mnemosyne (2005) were published by Scalo (Switzerland).
He has been represented by Tolarno Galleries since 2000.

Vernissage Nov 16th

Torlano Galleries
Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia
Free entry

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