Bill Henson (born 1955) Untitled, 1983-84

Bill Henson (born 1955) Untitled, 1983-84 type C photographs 78.0 x 67.0cm, 76.0 x 63.0cm, 76.0 x 63.0cm (3) Footnotes: PROVENANCE Deutscher Gertrude Street, Melbourne Private collection Olsen/Carr Art Dealers, Sydney Private collection, acquired from the above in 1994 Christie's, Sydney, 13 August 2000, lot 3 Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Bill Henson Photographs, Deutscher Gertrude Street, Melbourne, 15 June - 7 July 1989, cat. 63 Bill Henson, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 8 January – 3 April 2005, then touring; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 23 April – 10 July 2005 LITERATURE Bill Henson and Judy Annear, Mnemosyne, Scalo, Zurich, in association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, pp. 272-73 (illus.) 'Henson's devotion to Visconti's films and Mahler's symphonies is evident in his full-blown use of exotic locations, theatrical lighting and the elegiac mood he extracts from whatever he photographs. The motifs are female faces and nudes, aspects of baroque palaces, and rows of Old Master paintings in European museums. These apparently unrelated images are juxtaposed in pairs and triplets. The exhibition has no title and the photographs are unlabelled and unnumbered. Henson has given no information about the people, the locations or his ideas.... It is disturbing to admit that we find the extremes of squalor and opulence almost equally beautiful in Henson's pictures. We may question whether there is a heartless immorality at the basis of all aesthetic pleasure, or - a more comforting line of thought - whether this poignancy comes from the fact that the exuberance of the baroque and the starkness of the underworld milieu do have a common-denominator: The transient loveliness that flashes into view and fades into oblivion.' - Terrence Maloon, Wisps of light suspended in darkness, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 1985, p. 49 THIS WORK CAN BE VIEWED IN OUR MELBOURNE GALLERY For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing