Everything's Fucked
Artist: Paul Yore
Year: 2013
Date of Action: June 1st, 2013
Region: Australia
Location: Melbourne, Austrailia
Subject: Explicit Sexuality, Nudity, Youth
Medium: Installation, Sculpture
Confronting Bodies: Saint Kilda's Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne's Victoria Police
Description of Artwork: "Everything's Fucked" is a sprawling installation piece that can be entered and explored by a viewer. The installation makes use of doll parts, printed images, sex toys, paints, clays, and other media. Slogans such as "the pope is fucked" or "the police are fucked" can be seen plastered about the installation. The detail that has met with the strongest objections is a fully clothed printout of the underage singer Justin Bieber, to which the artist has affixed a urinating dildo.
The Incident: Victoria Police confiscated a few pieces from Paul Yore's exhibition at Saint Kilda's Linden Centre for Contemporary Art on June 1st, 2013 after images of adults engaged in sex acts with the faces of children pasted onto them drew outrage from visitors. Offended viewers called for the exhibition to be shut down and dismantled under Australia's strict child pornography laws. Saint Kilda's Linden Centre shut down the exhibition immediately following the police investigation. The exhibit does not display any photographs of nude children, but uses collage to place underage faces onto depictions of legal sex acts.
The artist issued the following statement: 'It's really censorial, it's very regressive and it's a sign of the times. It's also really a sign of indictment on the board of directors here, and the director, that they have pre-emptively shut down the exhibition without any suggestion from anyone externally that that should happen.
Paul Yore was awarded the prestigious Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award the same weekend for a different piece.
Results of Incident: No charges have been pressed, and the exhibition remains closed
Source:
• http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/police-swoop-on-porn-artwork-20130601-2nidg.html,
• http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/visual-arts/art-seizure-fires-censorship-row/story-fn9d3avm-1226655481756