Looking at banned books

Curated by Ms Jenny Lee, Associate Professor David Bennett (Culture & Communication) and Associate Professor Richard Pennell (Historical Studies), from the Arts Faculty, and designed with the help of recent Faculty of the VCA and Music graduate Ms Jenny Chang, the exhibition includes books, photographs, documents and original artworks exploring aspects of censorship.

Associate Professor Bennett says, “It’s important that past and present practices of censorship in Australia be scrutinised and highlighted.

“Freedom of expression, even in a liberal democratic nation that is a signatory to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, is a highly circumscribed principle, subject to numerous ‘states of exception’, and the question of its limits is always a political question, subject to contestation by conflicting interest-groups,” he explains.

The exhibition also delves into current censorship issues surrounding books such as euthanasia activist Phillip Nitschke’s The Peaceful Pill and the controversy surrounding the work of photographer Bill Henson.

Curator of Special Collections at the library Ms Pam Pryde says there are also a number of local and overseas artists contributing to the exhibition, with created works responding to the overall theme of censorship while others have adopted an individual book from which to frame a response.

Ms Pryde explains that the original idea for this exhibition began in 2007 when the Classification Review Board of the Office of Film and Literature Classification refused classification to two books held in the University’s Special Collections.

The books in question were Defence of the Muslim Lands and Join the Caravan by the late Abdullah Azzam.

According to Professor Pennell, Azzam was one of the principal theoreticians of the modern armed jihadist movement, and collaborated with Osama bin Ladin. The books were part of set reading for a course taught by Professor Pennell on the history of jihadism and were refused classification by the Literature Classification Review Board, and thus withdrawn from public display to safeguard the University’s legal situation.

Banned Books in Australia will be exhibited in the Baillieu Library, and runs from 7 June – 29 August. There will be a forum on censorship on Thursday 12 August with speakers including Dr Philip Nitschke (The Peaceful Pill), Dr Donald McDonald (Director, Classification Board) and Associate Professor Robert Nelson, (Associate Dean, Art & Design, Monash University who will discuss the Henson and Serrano affairs). Associate Professor David Bennett will chair the forum. More information:

http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/special/exhibitions/bannedbooks/