Art’s notorious celebrity: Bill Henson

The scene at the BMW Edge auditorium at Fed Square on Monday night was most extraordinary. The auditorium filled to capacity; hundreds turned away only to loiter around a projection screen in the atrium. The already prominent security was beefed up with a couple of police constables. Did they think perhaps, there might be ‘trouble’? The cameras were there. The media was there, the art-erati and the ‘ordinary’ too. All waiting with baited breath to hear controversial photographic artist Bill Henson defend art from being ‘shackled’ by the ‘witch hunters’ and ‘social engineers’ who would repudiate ‘truth’.