For those readers on the Bill Henson trail, the July issue of Art Monthly Australia contains key articles by Denise Ferris and Martyn Jolly, Adam Geczy, Donald Brook, and more… Very timely for the debates which will no doubt be raised in the context of the upcoming VIVID National Photography Festival here in Canberra. The cover image is by Polly Papapetrou, Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs (detail) 2003. If you want to read back along the Henson trail on this site, type “Henson” in the search box to your right… And follow the consequences of Art Monthly Australia’s stand in the SMH , the ABC, News (more Malevich than Papapterou, a Moral Rights issue in the making), something called Scopical. On Monday Perthnow interviews Olympia herself, (now eleven, and angry with the PM) and quotes from Martyn Jolly’s ABC interview this morning. And more on The Art Life. The A.C.T. Chief Minister Jon Stanhope is the only politician not running for cover, or threatening to “review” AMA’s funding: see his measured comments on the ABC. The Malevich-like blanking of the image only serves to intensify the frenzy… And Gerard Vaughan, Director of the NGV…

On the ABC the Prime Minister avoids the use of the word “revolting”, but (as reported in The Australian) says Mr Rudd today said work such as that shown in this month’s edition of Art Monthly Australia did the opposite of restoring dignity to the debate over depictions of children in art. The taxpayer-funded magazine used a picture of a naked six-year-old girl on the cover of its July edition in protest against the treatment of artist Bill Henson. Angered by the “hysteria” over Henson’s pictures of a 13-year-old girl, the magazine also has a number of highly sexualised images inside, according to the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. Art Monthly editor Maurice O’Riordan said he hoped the July edition would restore some “dignity to the debate”. Mr Rudd was asked if the picture restored dignity. “If you ask for my personal view, no it doesn’t. It does the reverse,” he told ABC television. “My view hasn’t changed on this. We’re talking about the innocence of little children here. “A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way. “I have very deep, strong, personal views on this, which is that we should be on about maximising the protection of children. “I don’t think this is a step in the right direction at all.” Mr Rudd said he had no idea what the motivation for the Art Monthly pictures was. “But I’ve got to say my interest and the interest of many Australians, I think most Australians, is to protect little children and restore some innocence to childhood,” he said. “Frankly, I can’t stand this stuff.”

And one crazy blogger found “children posing naked in adult jewellery” in AMA, which some journos have faithfully repeated!!!