New attack on freedom of expression:


By Susan Allan
15 February 2006

In an unprecedented attack on democratic rights and freedom of artistic expression, police in the Australian state of Victoria illegally, and without any prior warning, removed an artwork displaying a burnt and tattered Australian flag from a Melbourne gallery last month.

Created by Azlan McLennan and titled Proudly unAustralian, the flag was on a billboard on the first floor outside the Trocadero Art Space gallery. It is the fourth time in the past two years that McLennan’s work, which expresses political opposition to the “war on terror”, the oppression of Palestinians and the growing racial attacks on Muslims and Middle Eastern immigrants, has been censored by authorities.

Police did not inform either McLennan or Trocadero’s owners that they planned to seize Proudly unAustralian. Instead, they waited until the gallery was unattended and then entered a neighboring Internet café and climbed through a window to remove the artwork. A police business card was left behind to inform the artist.

The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights immediately condemned the police actions. NAVA executive director Tamara Winikoff said that the censorship of McLennan work was a serious violation of artistic freedom.

A NAVA media release declared: “In this case we are asking urgent questions about the artist’s rights: did the police have a warrant to remove the artwork, and if so on what grounds; is burning or defacing an Australian flag illegal under state or federal laws; are artists protected from these laws by satirical or fair comment provisions; would such an act be considered seditious under the new legislation; what must be the nature and form of public complaints in order to justify such actions?”

While police have since claimed that they acted in response to public complaints, gallery director Michael Brenner said he had received no objections to the billboard. The gallery, he said, still had not been informed whether police had an official warrant to remove the flag or any indication of when or if the artwork would be returned.

So far no charges have been laid against McLennan or the gallery owners, but police have told the media that they are “still investigating”. They have suggested that McLennan’s display could be treated as an offensive behavior or offensive language incident.

The seizure of McLennan’s artwork occurs against a background of ongoing nationalist hysteria whipped up by the state and federal government and the mass media, which is primarily being directed against Muslims and Middle Eastern immigrants.

A week before the police raid, a Western Sydney youth, Hadi Khawaja, was jailed after he took an Australian flag from an ex-serviceman’s club in Brighton-le-Sands and threw it to his friends, who burnt it in protest over racist mob attacks on Middle Eastern youth in the Sydney beach suburb of Cronulla last December. While it is not an offense to burn the Australian flag, Khawaja was found guilty of malicious damage and entering enclosed lands and sentenced to a harsh three-month prison term.

Right-wing radio announcers, along with certain parliamentarians, have seized on McLennan’s Proudly unAustralian to demand new legislation.

A day after the police raid, Bronwyn Bishop, a Liberal MP and former government minister, told a Young Liberal convention that she planned to introduce a private members’ bill to make it a criminal offence to “violate” the Australian flag. She declared that such incidents “denigrated our Australian culture and way of life”.

The censorship of Proudly unAustralian follows a series of attacks on freedom of artistic expression across Australia in the last decade, and particularly on the visual arts in Melbourne.

In 1996, the Kennett Liberal government banned artwork produced for a Melbourne freeway tunnel by Karen Lindner because it was critical of corporate sponsorship. In 1997, the National Gallery of Victoria withdrew Andrés Serrano’s photograph Piss Christ from the gallery after protests by right-wing Christian fundamentalists. In 2002, a giant painting by antiwar artist George Gittoes for a city apartment building was suddenly rejected by the property developers who had commissioned it, just as it was about to be unveiled.

McLennan has been a particular target. In 2004 his artwork Fifty Six, which consisted of an Israeli flag overlaid with statistics outlining the plight of the Palestinian people since 1948, was prevented from being displayed in a shop-front art space funded by Melbourne City Council. Zionist and other right-wing elements claimed it was anti-Semitic.

A year later, another McLennan work, Canberra 18, also partly funded by the Melbourne City Council, was prevented from being displayed. The artwork was critical of the “war on terrorism”, and referred to 18 groups on the federal government’s list of “terrorist organisations”. It consisted of pictures of various terrorists, including Osama bin Laden—with brief excerpts from statements made by the US State Department and the Australian government—and indicated that some of the organisations had previously received American backing.

to be continued...

While I agree with his right to display his art, all the works you have mentioned , that were removed, seem to have been on open, public display.

Shopfronts, Billboards, etc.

We see a blurring of the lines between Art, and Political comment.

As art, if he wants it to be displayed inside a gallery, no worries.

If it is political comment, on public display, then we only need look to the liberal pamphlet scam from the last election, to show that muslims also require some standards to be set, and without knowing the work involved, I could not say if it would be considered offensive or not.

As for flag burning, who cares?
I would feel pretty safe in australia, burning an aussie flag, could you say the same thing for any muslim country?

Oh, change the tape, imp.

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Are you going to lead us to believe the liberal pamphlet was art? 

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Yeh? Ok, I'd like to see you down at Flinders st. station burning an Aussie flag. I'll meet you there on the 25th. of April next year?

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Any sincere Muslim probably wouldn't care less. If you did it in somewhere like Lebanon yeh you might not survive, but the Christians and Druze would probably be just as opposed to you as any Muslim.

He should be charged with treason.
Burn the Israeli flag instead.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2008 at 9:08pm:


Yes the law would.
If you are Jewish you will get away with everything and if you are not a jew and you slander or harm a jew in anyway you will be delt with harshly.