Inquiring minds want to know.

Creative opportunity and fulfilment is, I believe, premised upon the preservation of well-bounded and safe conditions for the healthy psychological development of children fundamental to their self-esteem, confidence, the blossoming of their creative potential, and sense of expressive freedom.

‘Freedom from’ is the psychological foundation of ‘freedom to’, something that has been overlooked by many participants in this debate. The collective unwisdom of the Creative Stream’s ‘Open Letter’, in its defense of Bill Henson as scapegoat and martyr to art censorship, will go down in history as one of the grand follies of the Henson debate.

With respect to Mark’s request, I post now only with respect to Allison Croggon’s comment (then no more on this thread).

['It would be nice if people confined themselves to commenting on verifiable facts, instead of making up their own. But perhaps too much to hope for in this case'.]

As I have taken these ‘facts’ from Marr’s book perhaps the verifiability issue rests with him.

All quotes below are from ‘The Henson Case’, Chapter 6, ‘2020′, pp 76-84.

It seems that while Henson was under investigation and lying doggo, Alison Croggin was busily dragooning support for the ‘2020 Open Letter in Support of Bill Henson’ (published 27/05/08).

According to Marr:

‘Next morning, Monday 26 May, encouraged by the response to her email, she alerted the list that she was now drafting the letter. Sue Cato heard what was afoot from Jan Minchin of Tolarno Galleries where Henson exhibits in Melbourne. Cato kept a close eye on the various drafts of the letter over the next couple of days. After consulting her, Minchin emailed Croggin at 9.50am:

“The 2020 stream have to remember that we all need a supportive government and vibrant sector. Any letters/ad etc. should be a request to reconsider, provide more information and show support for Henson and the gallery – simply attacking the government gets us nowhere. It is the police making the decision on charges – not the government”…’

Marr goes on:

‘Croggon’s first draft was swiftly condemned as too tough on the Prime Minister. Cato rang her and Croggon sent delegates notes of their conversation: “Henson is mostly concerned that further damage – especially to those families and young people – is as limited as possible…He would prefer that the controversy is not escalated. I think Henson’s feelings on this ought to be respected…Cato made the point…”‘, etc, etc.

Marr continues:

‘Blanchett persuaded Croggin to change tack: Instead of rebuking Rudd they should urge the NSW authorities not to prosecute…’. Finally, according to Marr, Croggin drafted the Open Letter in the wee hours of May 27th, which she emailed to her fellow delegates, concluding: ‘”I hope you all think it is a worthy document in defence of Henson’s work and ultimately our own”‘. Marr then writes: ‘Henson read the final draft. Melbourne University Press publisher Louise Adler tweaked the rhetoric of the opening lines’ (pp78 – 83).

If Marr has reported accurately on events, perhaps Alison Croggon is being disingenuous in denying her connections to various associates of Henson during the drafting of the ‘Open Letter’ which, far from being a reasoned argument against censorship, amounted to no less than a full-flight panegyric in defense of Bill Henson that was, no doubt unwittingly, a godsend to behind-the-scenes machinations to silence and obstruct debate.

I use “cosy” and “close” figuratively here to refer to associations typically formed to achieve certain mutual outcomes or mutual advantages. Organising anything depends upon co-operation and collaboration and doesn’t at all require intimate friendship or long-standing social connection, as any mother of a school-age child well knows. Direct contact between protagonists is not required as networking develops. All that’s required is a shared aim or outcome and the communication channels by which this may be collectively achieved (and extremely rapidly via the internet!). Pragmatic, casual political alliances are the paradigm case.

It goes without saying that alliances may be healthy or perverse, open or clandestine, conscious or unwitting, but it seems to me that – by drawing upon their privileged collective status and power networks to sway public opinion via an Open Letter in support of Bill Henson (that was simultaneously produced in distant collusion with Henson and his spin doctor), the members of the ‘2020′ Creative Stream reneged upon their overarching responsibilities to the community to behave with circumspection and integrity, and instead acted ‘ultra vires’ and without ethics.

Had Henson ultimately been vindicated (and these political interferences ensured that this would never happen!), could there still have been any justification for this network of influence-peddling under the auspices of the taxpayer-funded ‘2020 Summit’?

If a collective ‘2020′ statement was deemed essential to communicate widespread arts community concerns about art censorship, could this not have been more appropriately achieved by an independent statement from members of the Creative Stream to this effect?

Did the anti-censorship cause really require a detailed gesture of solidarity with, and the virtual taking of instructions from, the Machiavellian PR machine of a man under police investigation at the time?

It seems to me that, as with the ‘grooming’ of the family and the headmistress, the members of the Creative Stream were sitting ducks in their post-Howard art-censorship panic for recruitment into a cunning stratagem by bigger and cleverer forces to obstruct the police prosecution and to silence community debate. In doing so, they tarnished themselves both by deed and association.

Such is the broad scope and manipulative power of this corrupting dynamic that an art world has been hoodwinked, a family groomed, a child mesmerized, a headmistress duped, a coterie manipulated, and a journalist bedazzled. This is a familiar, sinister old story with a slippery new twist, now seemingly too entrenched to rectify.

For Marr to assume that the cosy relationships between the Oxleys, Sue Cato (Henson’s one-woman PR machine), Jen Minchin (Tolarno Galleries), and Alison Croggon (Theatre Notes) are beyond question or reproach seems oddly naive for a lawyer and journalist of his standing.

Does he see nothing ‘irregular’ in the close ties between the artist, the gallerists, and his own publisher that could place his integrity as an impartial journalist in question?

For the record: I have never met, in my life, David Marr or Sue Cato. I maybe said hello once to Jan Minchin, during the 2020 conference. I met Bill Henson in 1998, when I published some of his photographs in a small magazine called Masythead, and have never met nor spoken to him since.

I’m not at all sure how this constitutes a “cosy relationship”.

Nor did Henson have anything at all to do with the drafting of the letter. The final draft was in fact given “the nod” by me, after an exhaustive process of consultation with the signatories. I did not necessarilu incorporate all suggestions, although I listened to them. That’s why it’s my signature at the bottom.

It would be nice if people confined themselves to commenting on verifiable facts, instead of making up their own. But perhaps too much to hope for in this case.

Did you leave the same “response” over there as well? Blogs are about discussions, not snitches claiming “Gotcha” nom-de-blog. Swicthing and baiting is surely tired and unhelpful?

Hint: some of us read more than one blog, even though you clearly don’t.

For a high profile journalist and card-carrying civil-libertarian to be at the vanguard of the anti-censorship sidelining of the child protection issue while at the same time in negotiations with his publisher, Michael Heyward, a friend of Henson , to write ‘The Henson Case’, is a little concerning (http://article.wn.com/view/2008/10/09/With_friends_like_Marr_Henson_not_short_of_enemies/).

Also of concern is the inclusion in ‘The Henson Case’ of a never previously published full-frontal nude (this time) photograph of the girl(except for the restored exhibition and the gallery website in May/June) in the colour plate section.

If consent was provided by the girl/girl’s parents, etc, what kind of persuasive argument was presented to her? What was the publishing rationale behind it? Whose freedoms are being fully expressed here? Was it just a cynical exercise to sell more copies, like any cheap tabloid? Is this just a two-fingered salute to the philistines and wowsers? A provocation to the Police? Or just one of those glorious moments of triumph by the powerful over the weak?

Are there no boundaries left to violate? Is there no end to civil-libertarian hypocrisy?

For Marr to assume that the cosy relationships between the Oxleys, Sue Cato (Henson’s one-woman PR machine), Jen Minchin (Tolarno Galleries), and Alison Croggon (Theatre Notes) are beyond question or reproach seems oddly naive for a lawyer and journalist of his standing.

Does he see nothing ‘irregular’ in the close ties between the artist, the gallerists, and his own publisher that could place his integrity as an impartial journalist in question?

Does he see nothing incestuous about the close consultations between all of the above during Croggin’s repeated drafting of the 2020 Open Letter, when the final draft was given the nod by Henson?

Was the community made aware of Henson’s involvement in the 2020 Open Letter?

So much from freedom of speech and any notion of Marr as an independent journalist!

Perhaps with respect to a less serious issue a little hypocritical lapse might be forgiven.

But so many boundaries violations have been ‘normalised’ by Marr’s selective reorganization of the facts that I am beginning to wonder whether the prosecution failed and the debate died of natural causes, given his unflagging revisionism.

“Late in the afternoon I was advised by a friend, who was taking phone calls, to remove the images from “Photo of the Day” from my Web site: ‘The Sun’, Rupert Murdoch’s notorious daily tabloid was going after me and would have no qualms about taking images off the Web site. So I removed all the images from “Photo of the Day” from the Web, but left other work, which also featured my daughter. Someone from ‘The Sun’ took a picture from another body of work, cropped it from the sides, erased the background, manipulated the hair to look messy and placed black bars across her face and at the bottom of the image where the vulva would have been had the image been fully frontal (it was not). Next to my image they placed another image, one which they claimed to have taken from a “child porn site.” The images are similar in that both have white backgrounds, both contain young girls, both are cropped at the very top of the legs and both have black bars over the genital area and the eyes. The headline of this full-page spread read “One of the These Pictures Is From A Trendy London Gallery, the other is from a child porn site: Can You Tell The Difference?” For an entire week, ‘The Sun’, whose readership is in the millions, ran articles attacking me, called me a child pornographer, my work an “evil tide of filth,” and suggested that I be “dragged by the hair through the streets kicking and screaming.”

[Betsy Schneider in Chapter 21: "Not a Pretty Picture": Four photographers tell their personal stories about child "pornography" and censorship in 'Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression' (2006), edited by Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva]

It also reminds me of a recent episode of ‘The Hollowmen’ in which the PM wants a big arts building built for his legacy. The nerdy bureaucrats (who I love) come up with the idea of huge artist in the community program as the PM’s legacy. Deoesn’t go down too well of course. No red carpets to walk down.

But an extensive artist in the community and artist in schools program would be great. I know it already happens but it could much larger and better integrated.

The Brisbane NLP group’s proposal was defeated at the NLP Founding Conference in 1989 by those who, from a somewhat unreconstructed Marxist perspective, argued that “all art is political” and that therefore the democratisation of art should entail artists submitting their work for political invigilation and approval by committees of workers and citizens. One suspects that it is the latter conception of “democratisation” of art that Bill Henson’s critics would favour.

As a matter of historical interest the NLP folded in 1993.