Bill Henson: cloud landscapes

Overview

Any show of Henson’s works is always going to be worth a visit. He’s one of our most successful artists, and with good reason – dude takes a seriously good picture. Bill Henson: cloud landscapes is snack-sized but provides a pleasing survey of his body of work. What will strike you first is the current of sameness running throughout the show. Yes, the later works are perhaps slightly more refined and a little more painterly (fancy art speak for "it really looks like it was painted"), but the similarities among them all are startling. The same smoky palette of enveloping blacks, blues and faded neutrals; and the same meditative, melancholic tone emanates from each work. Such consistency is impressive. He recently made the shift to digital printing processes, but the change is indiscernible.

Henson’s work can be filed pretty neatly into two categories: landscapes and figures. Both are characterised by a sense of deep reverie, and all his works are beautifully executed, but his ability to capture the human form is what he does best. There is a vim and vigour present in his bodies that seems to be somewhat absent in the landscapes.

Unsurprisingly, the curators have neglected to include any of the works responsible for garnering the controversy of a few years back (Henson found himself in hot water over images he had taken of nude children but was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing). There is one picture featuring a young-ish boy, but he does look old enough to legally drink and made his own bad decisions.

His work is synonymous with a masterful treatment of darkness and light. In a 2004 interview with art critic Sebastian Smee, Henson explained: ‘In some respects not even being able to see the whole structure is partly what the work is about — the way in which things go missing in the shadows. Shadows can animate the speculative capacity in the viewer in a way that highlights can’t. It’s often, to my way of thinking, what you don’t see in the photograph that has the greatest potential to transmit information’. Bill Henson: cloud landscapes is yet another reminder that Bill Henson is an artist working at the top of his game.