What's lewd to prudes is all the rage
By Rosalie Higson
June 13, 2003
THE pornography industry in the US has a turnover three times that of
Hollywood.
The information technology industry estimates that up to 70 per cent of
internet searches are for porn. That makes it a potent cultural force:
behind closed doors, the West is saturated in pornographic images.
Opening today at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney is Staring
in the Dark, an exhibition by nine Australian and English photo-media
artists that subversively draws on and appropriates pornographic styles and
formulas. It is the second in a series of three dealing with the interface
between art and popular culture. Sandwiched between fashion and skate
culture, it's sure to be the most contentious.
Staring in the Dark comes with a warning that it is not suitable for
children or the faint of heart (that is, those disturbed by sexual
imagery). Indeed, one video film made for the exhibition by Brisbane's
Scott Redford, dealing with Berlin's gay skinhead S & M scene, will not be
shown because it is too explicit, while "girl come" clothes are splashed
with the patterns of Darwin-based Cee Speret's vaginal fluid � her artistic
signature.
Centre director and curator Alasdair Foster calmly defends the works,
saying that the challenge for viewers and artists is to get around the
endemic hypocrisy that surrounds pornography. "It is incredibly prevalent,
yet it is treated always as if it is marginal."
He says that because porn is almost always viewed alone or in a closed
environment, when brought into public view "it's not dissimilar from
Duchamp bringing the urinal into the museum � the piece of functional
plumbing you'd rather not have in public becomes something that you can
look at in a different way".
The exhibition consists of a mix of video, computer-generated imagery,
sculptural installations, a set of mock-historical images, light boxes,
block prints and clothing such as jeans incorporating crocodile and
kangaroo skin, a raincoat, gowns and handbags, as well as English
photographer Paul M. Smith's humorous yet unsettling melanges of men's and
women's bodies. It covers most sexual bases from radical to homely, with
gay, S & M, straight, bisexual and masturbatory subjects. There is plenty
that is not specific, Foster says, but examines the patterns of mass media
poses and general sexual behaviour that infiltrate society through things
such as porn.
Foster says the analysis and/or appropriation of pornography is happening
across the world and articulates a mood of our time. "There are large parts
of the population, especially at the younger end, for whom this . . . is no
problem at all. Collectively we don't do ourselves any good by pretending
that it's marginal and minority and [doesn't really exist]. That's just
kind of cosy."
He says those who oppose the use of sexual imagery assume that "monkey see,
monkey does" and should be more concerned about what is on television each
night.
"Think about whodunits, which are considered to be the most family kind of
entertainment, where people are killed with no real moral outrage at all.
They are simply ciphers [that] allow a mathematical process of deduction to
go on."
He considers such violence is much more worrying for society than art,
"which looks head-on and which very often operates cathartically rather
than in terms of patterning of activity or even blunting of sensibilities.
I think you blunt sensibilities in terms of what you make cosy, like wife
battering used to be made cosy by notions of sexual difference and domestic
privacy and all of those things."
He says critical responses to an issue such as this fall into "it's a
freedom of speech issue or protect our children, both of which are defence
mechanisms for not dealing with the thing itself".
Staring in the Dark, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, until July 20.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6586866%255E16953,00.html
