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January 6, 2011
The Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation took exception to the image by Archibald prize winner Del Kathryn Barton of her six-year-old son, Kell that was part of a charity of works of Australian artists. Del Kathryn Barton won the Archibald prize in 2008 with You Are What Is Most Beautiful About Me, A Self Portrait With Kell And Arella her son and daughter.
The reason given is that the image does not comply with the hospital's strict rules on images of children---its visual protocols.
Del Kathryn Barton, Eye Land of Kell, 2010
Is this another instance of nudity being conflated with pornography--based on conservative concerns about the sexualization of children's innocence and images for pedophiles? The photograph is clearly not pornographic---it looks appropriate for a charity trying to raise money for the hospital. The googly eyes are plastered over the skin like ocular measles.
Robert Nelson says that after the Bill Henson affair children in art are to be regulated by protocols devised by the Australia Council to organise to ensure, first, that artists obey the law and, second, that children not be exploited in art.
He says that the problem is 'exploitation' as the government and its instrumentalities:
don't have to name or prove any ill-consequence that results from an artwork. They can obstruct creative work on the basis of "preventing exploitation" without ever feeling a need to show how someone might be exploited...The Sydney hospital won't be able to produce a sheet that indicates in one column what damage Barton's picture could possibly do, with the chances of that event happening entered in the other column.
Cultural conservatives see the harm in terms of pedophilia-is-everywhere and sexual exploitation and an occasion to denounce contemporary art. Their narrative is one of moral decline and sex is their bete noire.
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The hospital has the role of making people well. It is not a gallery that seeks to enter the debate of what is right or wrong on this subject. It is likely to offend some so a picture of a tree is better for them.