Artists a 'soft target' as regulators tighten rules on child porn
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday January 12, 2010
ARTISTS are being used as scapegoats for the State Government's inability to stem the tide of child pornography, says a visual arts lobby group.Tamara Winikoff, the executive director of the National Association for the Visual Arts, said a possible tightening of NSW child pornography laws could increase the artistic self-censorship that had happened in the wake of the Bill Henson controversy."People are making choices not to publish imagery which otherwise would be perfectly innocuous," she said. "Just because a child is naked does not mean it is a sexualised image. But those distinctions at the moment are not being drawn."A Government working group has recommended removing the defence of artistic merit from images deemed to be pornographic."Because there's so much fuss by the media and Australia Council about child pornography, about any sort of representations of children ... we tend to shy away from them. We just don't want to take the risk," Ms Winikoff said.The association will study the recommendations and next week will release its art censorship guide for artists, publishers and galleries. It submitted the 200-page document to the Classification Board because of the nature of its content.The guide contains sexually explicit material as well as an image by the photographer Polixeni Papapetrou of her daughter, entitled Olympia wearing her grandmother's jewellery #4, 2001.The guide has been cleared as unrestricted. It gives advice on how to avoid and deal with trouble, what to do if the police call, and also has sections on sedition, indecency and obscenity.Ms Winikoff said artists were being used as a soft target behind which lay a bigger problem."While [the association] does not in any regard condone the production or consumption of child pornography, equally it does not want to see artists become the scapegoats for community concern over the widespread availability of this material on the internet and the increasing sexualisation of children in advertising," she said. The latter had been allowed to continue unfettered.No artists were represented on the Government's working group on child pornography, whose recommendations were released on Sunday.Responses to them can be made to the office of the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos. Amendments to legislation will go to cabinet for approval before Parliament resumes next month.Editorial €”Page 10
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