Dealing with "Objectionable" Art: New Zealand's Approach

Abstract

One man’s art is another man’s vulgarity: what to some might deprave will to others inspire. This inevitable subjectivity makes art a strange bedfellow of the law, a relationship that is perhaps most controversial when the law seeks to negotiate and suppress the “affective jolt” engendered in the spectator by certain artworks. This paper examines the way in which New Zealand’s censorship regime has approached the “affective jolt” experienced when art deals with content that is shocking, offensive, or “objectionable”.