Time, place, social values and mores are the themes of these pieces,as they explore specific incidents where artworks have been the subjectof threatened or actual 'censorship'. These works, and/or their authorsor curators were subjected to legal challenge on the basis of theirbeing in some way offensive. In all such cases, the complainants - andthe authorities that responded to them - usually held values that wereat odds with those of the creative practitioners and administratorsinvolved at the time. Social values and levels of tolerance change overtime, and place, and these articles seek to reflect those matters inplay at the time of writing. What may have been regarded as obscene,profane, pornographic or defamatory ten or twenty years ago may not beviewed in the same light today or in ten/twenty years' time. UK law hasgenerally sought to provide a loose legal framework within whichartists and curators, as well as potential complainants, can vie forwhat might be 'acceptable'.

Examples of such issues include the 1987 Parliamentary debates aboutthe introduction of Clause 28 (in the Bill seeking to ban the promotionof homosexuality in school teaching); the 1994 Government's proposalsto introduce privacy laws; the 1996 self-censorship by the HaywardGallery of one of Mapplethorpe's photographs, for fear of prosecutionfor showing an 'obscene' work; the censorship of Art Monthly by prisonauthorities in Florida, USA, in 2000 on the grounds that some of itscontents were pornographic; and the seizure by police from the SaatchiGallery of Tierny Gearon's photographs of her naked children, on thegrounds that that they might be in some way obscene. This last casereflects a recent trend, over the past ten years or so, of increasingnumbers of complaints relating to paedophilia in artworks.