When Melbourne artist Paul Yore set out to participate in an exhibition called Like Mike Now What??, he can’t have realised that he would end up at the centre of the most significant art censorship controversy since the Bill Henson scandal of 2008.
Australian artists under the age of 40 might have thought the days of charging artists for obscenity have been consigned to the history books. But perhaps a more censorious era is returning. While the Bill Henson controversy is now half a decade away, government and police action against art continues in periodic spurts. Earlier this year, Australian classifiers banned a movie from screening at Sydney’s Mardi Gras Film Festival. And only a fortnight ago, Paul Yore’s show was raided and Yore pulled in for questioning by Victoria Police.
