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Details
- Date
- 1979
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- 9 gelatin silver photographs
- Edition
- 2/10
- Dimensions
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a - Untitled image No 7, 23 x 42.1 cm, image
a - Untitled image No 7, 30 x 49.9 cm, sheet
a - Untitled image No 7, 42 x 61 x 4 cm, frame
b - Untitled image No 8, 23 x 42.2 cm, image
b - Untitled image No 8, 30.5 x 50.5 cm, sheet
b - Untitled image No 8, 42 x 61 x 4 cm, frame
c - Untitled image No 9, 23 x 42.2 cm, image
c - Untitled image No 9, 30 x 49.9 cm, sheet
c - Untitled image No 9, 42 x 61 x 4 cm, frame
d - Untitled image No 10, 41.7 x 32.7 cm, image
d - Untitled image No 10, 50.5 x 40.3 cm, sheet
d - Untitled image No 10, 61 x 51.5 x 4 cm, frame
e - Untitled image No 11, 41.7 x 32.9 cm, image
e - Untitled image No 11, 49.7 x 40.4 cm, sheet
e - Untitled image No 11, 61 x 51.5 x 4 cm, frame
f - Untitled image No 12, 41.7 x 32.8 cm, image
f - Untitled image No 12, 50.5 x 40.4 cm, sheet
f - Untitled image No 12, 61 x 42 x 4 cm, frame
g - Untitled image No 13, 41.7 x 32.7 cm, image
g - Untitled image No 13, 50.5 x 40.4 cm, sheet
g - Untitled image No 13, 61 x 42 x 4 cm, frame
h - Untitled image No 14, 23 x 42.3 cm, image
h - Untitled image No 14, 30.1 x 50 cm, sheet
h - Untitled image No 14, 42 x 61 x 4 cm, frame
i - Untitled image No 15, 23 x 42.3 cm, image
i - Untitled image No 15, 29.7 x 49.5 cm, sheet
i - Untitled image No 15, 42 x 61 x 4 cm, frame
- Signature & date
Signed and dated lower sheet [Nos.7-10, 12-15], ink "...1979...Bill Henson BILL HENSON".
Signed and dated lower sheet [No.11], ink "...1979...BILL HENSON Bill Henson".- Credit
- Purchased 1981
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 183.1981.2.a-i
- Copyright
- © Bill Henson. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
- Artist information
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Bill Henson
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
Bill Henson’s Untitled sequence 1979 is one of the most remarkable and encompassingly powerful statements produced in recent Australian photography. In fact it occupies a special territory, in subject matter, formal conception and psychological range, that is shared by no other photographic work in Australia. So many nuances and contrasts are threaded into the infinitely varied visual and psychological texture of the work: motion and immobility, naked and clothed, youth and age, the private and erotic resonated against the public and social response, composure and violence, interaction and isolation, vulnerability and withholding, prosaic incident versus monumentality and transcendence.
The whole work is notably of and about the medium of photography, but it is a work that originates and finds its completion in the imagination.
Bodies and faces – especially of the boy – are quickened by a sense of life in motion. Figures seem to be moving both towards and away from a moment of held focus, like objects moving in space and occasionally picking up paths of light that provisionally describe form. There is a strange evanescence and transmutation conveyed through figures that seem at once to assume and surrender corporeal being.
Strong in its consciousness of the history of art, Untitled sequence 1979 is deeply informed also by the language of film and employs a non-narrative formal structure that has analogies with a major piece of music…Bernice Murphy, first published Australian Perspecta 1981, AGNSW, Sydney 1981 (revised), republished Bill Henson: Mnemosyne, Scalo, Zurich/AGNSW, Sydney 2005 p 132 (extract)
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Exhibition history
Shown in 3 exhibitions
Bill Henson Photographs, Church Street Photographic Centre, Richmond, Feb 1980–Feb 1980
Australian Perspecta 1981, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 29 May 1981–21 Jun 1981
Bill Henson, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 08 Jan 2005–03 Apr 2005
Bill Henson, Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, 23 Apr 2005–10 Jul 2005
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Bibliography
Referenced in 6 publications
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Judy Annear, Look, 'The elusive Bill Henson', pg.28-31, Sydney, Dec 2004-Jan 2005, 29, 30.
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David Malouf, Mnemosyne, essay, pg.35, Sydney, 2005, 35, 74-82 (illus.).
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Bernice Murphy, Australian Perspecta 1981, Sydney, 1981, 88-89 (illus.). cat.no. 62, illustration of parts f, g, h, i - nos. 12, 13, 14, 15
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Gael Newton, Australian Art Review, 'Photography, Towards a dialogue with other media', p42-46, Rozelle, 1982, 44-45 (illus.).
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Sebastian Smee, Art and Australia (Vol. 42, No. 3), 'Bill Henson', pg.396-405, Sydney, Mar 2005-May 2005, 398 (illus.). illustration is of i
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Donald Williams and Colin Simpson, Art now: contemporary art post - 1970, Sydney, 1994, 126 (illus.). fig.no. 7.1
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