FOOTSCRAY artist Paul Yore may be charged with child pornography offences after police seized his artwork from a St Kilda gallery.
Yore’s collage installation piece Everything’s F***ed allegedly depicted sexual acts superimposed with children’s faces.
The works were on display at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts as part of a five-gallery tribute to controversial Australian artist Mike Brown.
Visitors were handed flyers noting the material may cause offence to some people.
Police seized some of the works on June 1 following a complaint, despite claims by Yore supporters that his collages are art rather than pornography.
The 25-year-old is likely to be charged with producing and possessing child pornography after being interviewed by police on June 3 and released pending a court summons. The charges carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.
Yore supporter Jeremy Gaden, director of The Substation gallery in Newport, branded the police seizure “outrageous”.
‘‘Our take on it is that the artist produced the work with no intention of eliciting sexual gratification for himself or the public,” he said.
“There’s a big difference between exploiting children for sexual purposes and using imagery in an artistic context and that’s what’s getting lost here.”
The police art seizure is the first in Australia since the removal of Bill Henson photos from a Sydney gallery in 2008 over the depiction of naked children.
— with The Age
