Knuckledraggers II
WHAT is your definition of pornography, obscenity and exploitation, when it comes to children? According to the Prime Minister and his mate Brendan Nelson plus a rag-tag mob of outraged worthies, the cover of the current issue of Art Monthly Australia fits the description.
Well, sorry. I disagree. In my view the image depicted here is about the obscenity of violence, the exploitation of ordinary people and pornography is the self-satisfied faces of men and women who can disregard what is happening here. It’s a photo from Iraq and depicts just one of the consequences of “the War on Terror”. And I think it needs to be seen.
Meanwhile, according to Art Monthly Australia’s editor Maurice O’Riordan, the immediate effect on the magazine of the “Olympia cover” brouhaha is that some federally-funded cultural organisations have already withdrawn scheduled advertising from the next issue.
No reasons have been given and, O’Riordan says, he can only speculate. “It’s hard to say … I can’t see why after 200-plus issues we’re no longer seen as reputable, or that being in the next issue would somehow taint them?”
TODAY (July 10), O’Riordan emails: “Just to let you know we have been ordered to provide the issue #211 to the Classification Board, our deadline for the application is this Friday.
“Until a classification or ban is imposed, it is an offence to sell the magazine ... not sure how that affects our current distribution, most of our sales are usually through subscription but there has obviously been a greater demand for this issue ... in the retail outlets that chose to stock it in the first place.”
Art Monthly Australia is a journal with a circulation of some 5000 subscribers whose interests and work are summed up by the magazine’s title.Nevertheless, you can bet that the extra sales O’Riordan mentions have not been generated by a sudden interest in serious essays and reviews relating to art and art practice in this country, but rather, from stickybeaks and hopeful prurients.
Meanwhile, virtually all the ultra-vocal critics of the magazine have either not seen it or not seen or read the offending article(s). But it hasn’t stopped them offering opinions, demanding to be heard and for their sensibilities to be attended to.
The subsequent degree of self-censorship, self protection and craven caution now evident in cultural organisations withdrawing from the magazine is as alarming. The raison d’etre of such outfits ought to be independent thought and inquiry: that’s what art is for.
There are many reasons to be alert and alarmed at the moment and this farrago is one of them. If this issue of AMA is re-classified or banned from public sale it will be another bleak moment in the cultural and artistic life of the country. At a time when Australian art and artists are under economic siege anyway, and when AMA is one of the few readily accessible forums where art and artists are treated with respect and scholarship, threats to its funding and continuing existence are particularly to be resisted.
One way or another, the time has come to pay attention and get up and do something about it. And just because you don’t have paint under your fingernails or an original Adam Cullen on your wall, don’t think the freedom of art and artists doesn’t affect you.
FIRST they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me. – Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Now they’re coming for the artists and it’s time to speak out.
