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Bill HENSON
b. Australia, 1955
Untitled (from the Kindertotenlieder series) 1976
colour photograph
LT2021.90.1-16
On long term loan from the collection of Anouk Hulme
About the artist and their work:
Bill Henson is one of Australia’s leading contemporary photographic artists. Henson was born in 1955 and studied visual arts under Louis Athol Shmith and John Cato at the Prahran College of Advanced Education (one of Deakin’s antecedent institutions). Although Henson did not complete his studies, Shmith showed his works to the curator of photography at the National Gallery of Victoria, which led to first solo exhibition there in 1975.
Henson exhibited widely both within Australia and internationally. This includes the recent solo exhibitions Bill Henson, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2017); Oneiroi, Hellenic Museum, Melbourne (2016); Cloud Landscapes, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2013); Bill Henson, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2012); Bill Henson, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2007); Bill Henson: Three Decades of Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005); Bill Henson, Centro de Fotografia, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain (2003); and Bill Henson, 46th Venice Biennale, Australian Pavilion, Venice (1995).
Henson’s untitled photographic images Kindertotenlieder are an ongoing series of works inspired by the poems of German poet Friedrich Rückert that reflect on feelings of loss and grief. In the 1830s Rückert wrote over four hundred poems after the death of his children to scarlet fever. Seventy years later the 21st century German composer Gustav Mahler created a song cycle of classical musical compositions dedicated to Rückert’s poems. Henson’s series captures dream-like images of Mahler’s family home in Maiernigg, Austria and the surrounding forest and lake. The series was first exhibited at Realities Gallery, Melbourne in 1987 and continued as a project by Henson over several decades. In 2017 this series was reproduced in entirety as a limited-edition artist book.
