The Light Fades but the Gods Remain
Bill Henson
Thames & Hudson
Bill Henson has a long association with the Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) and the surrounding area of Glen Waverley where he spent his youth. So it is fitting that for the gallery’s 25th anniversary this special exhibition and monograph came to be. Henson’s connection with the region is the focus of this series of photographs produced in 1985-86, which portrays luminous renditions of twilight suburbia, ruins of antiquity and the fruitful mysteries of adolescence.
The publication is divided in two parts (like the exhibition) the first being the aforementioned series and the second commissioned by the City of Monash and the MGA to respond to the earlier works by creating 11 new works. The pages are filled with a non-linear, atmospheric meditation where dichotomous imagery floats in and out of focus.
Remnants of buildings from centuries past, modernist service stations, fast food premises and portraits sit with gloaming deep pink skies and clouds that all speak of life and loss, past and present, innocence and corruption.
The new re-visited works produced in 2018-19, some 30 years after the first series. The prints of the same region encompass gossamer views of a quieter, but no less powerful bush landscape on the urban peripheries that holds a glimpse of an empty chair or a wire fence. Henson’s enduring psychological oeuvre offers a vision of humanity’s torrid past and speculative future
