Michael Ascroft, Melbourne
Just two days after a deliberately burned Australian flag was put on display above a Footscray street, it was seized by police. The flag was installed outside Trocadero Art Space for the exhibition Proudly unAustralian by Melbourne artist Azlan McLennan. The provocative artwork was intended to be on public display for Australia Day.
Footscray police said they had received "a number of complaints from the public" about the work. However according to gallery director Michael Brenner, the police were unable to explain to him the nature of the complaints. Police also told Brenner that they were investigating whether any crime had been committed.
A number of prominent lawyers have raised serious doubts about the legality of the police actions. Simeon Beckett, president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, told the January 30 Melbourne Age: "It is extraordinary and potentially unlawful that the police have seized an artwork before they appear to have determined whether an offence has been committed."
Even Prime Minister John Howard said that burning the flag was "offensive, not illegal", responding to Aboriginal activists who burned the flag as part of Australia Day protests in Brisbane.
McLennan commented to Green Left Weekly about "the audacity of the police to refuse to recognise how many Indigenous and Muslim Australians take offence to the Australian flag". He asked: "Does this mean that every time I see an Australian flag in public, or every bit of corporate advertising for that matter, that I can call Footscray police to have it promptly removed?" According to McLennan, "the law requires a reasonable amount of notice be given" so artists have the opportunity "to choose to remove the work themselves".
This is the fourth time McLennan has been censored over the last 18 months. One year ago he displayed "Pay your way" posters in two tram shelters. Although the posters were deemed to be "offensive" and "stupid" by acting transport minister Bob Cameron, and Adshel, the company that owns the shelters, demanded they be taken down, there was a process of communication between authorities, the gallery and the artist. Yet in the case of Proudly unAustralian, the police acted hastily to remove the art work and then threatened the artist with possible charges, setting a new precedent in the recent bouts of intimidation and censorship of cultural expression.
From Green Left Weekly, February 8, 2006.
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