SEAN O’Carroll sparked an outrage from gallery goers and critics last year when his photographic exhibition Boys, Guns, Etc? depicted a series of naked young boys playing with plastic toy guns.

One of these portraits scored the artist the $10,000 Picture This prize from the Brunswick Street Gallery, where he’ll exhibit his latest controversial work, Ritalin.

The show features similarly controversial nudity, this time picturing boys in stark metal cages secured by chains. Himself a father of two boys, O’Carroll insists that nudity need not be sexual, and has a central place in art. “Putting them in OshKosh clothes places them in this century,” he says. “If they are naked, it takes on a timeless element; it’s eternal and symbolises the archetypal boy.”

The show is named after the drug used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and explores how society expects its boys to behave. ‘‘The cage is representative of what we, as a society, are doing to boys.” O’Carroll argues we’re increasingly reluctant to accept the trials of young masculinity. “[Boys] challenge authority and muck around and they push boundaries. In the crudest sense the cage resembles Ritalin, but in a broader way it resembles societal attitudes towards everything boys are.”

The former teacher is concerned at the almost fearful approach to medicating any signs of rebellion in children, pointing to the way in which ADHD is diagnosed.

“The drug is borne of the classroom,” he says. “With some of the diagnostic symptoms – doesn’t sit still, doesn’t listen when spoken to, leaves seat when it’s inappropriate – we recognise that these boys aren’t doing well in at school.” O’Carroll says that rather than finding alternative education, society often tries to change the boys to fit the mould. ‘‘It’s like having a health system where all beds are one size and 10 per cent of the population are too tall, so you just chop off their feet.”

O’Carroll also worries about misdiagnoses, pointing out that many artists habitually display behaviour we now readily classify as mentally unstable.

“In cases where children are harmed, we should use the full force of the law to prosecute the perpetrator. ... not censor the crap out of everybody so we can’t do our work.”