Bill Henson : dark desire

Sale : Gippsland Art Gallery, 2014. Quarto, illustrated gatefold wrappers, pp. 76, fully illustrated with Henson’s photographs. Essay by Simon Gregg. Limited to 500 copies. An as new copy.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, Victoria, 29 November 2014 to 1 February 2015.

“‘Dark Desire’ explores Henson’s enduring fascination with darkness and light, within works that alternate between landscape and figure subjects. Presented in a completely blacked-out gallery, the exhibition will consider darkness as a means of altering perception and blurring the line between reality and the unconscious. Henson’s moving representations of landscape transform natural rock formations into looming and silent sentinels. Shown together with images of waterfalls and clouds, they become timeless and ageless. By contrast, the prone young figures become all the more vulnerable and fragile. Cumulatively the different subjects occupy a space that is mythically dark and yet distinctively Australian.” – Art Almanac https://www.art-almanac.com.au/bill-henson-dark-desire/

Trove locates only 4 copies: Art Gallery of South Australia Research Library; Monash Public Library Service; National Gallery of Victoria. The Shaw Research Library; National Library of Australia.