Exhibition: Bill Henson

Bill Henson’s new exhibition is a glittering array of never-seen-before photographs. Some were commenced in the 1990s; all were completed during Melbourne’s long COVID lockdowns. The sense of deep time behind Henson’s images is a hallmark of his approach to photography – an attempt, as he puts it “to get closer to things.”

“It sometimes takes years for me to work out what I want to photograph, a rumination which gradually clarifies itself over a long period of time,“ he says. “I spend a lot of time thinking about things, daydreaming. It takes awhile for things to get to the point to say I know what I need. It’s a face, or a body or a landscape of a particular kind, or it’s the effects of the weather and how that changes the nature of the landscape.”

Bill Henson.

Main image above: Bill Henson Untitled 2016-17, CL SH816 N9, archival inkjet pigment print, 127 x 180 cm, edition of 5 + 2AP

Tolarno Galleries. Melbourne until 24 July 2021