Prayerful Duplication

Today we went to Dublin and visited a very wonderful ohotographic exhibition of landscapes shot in County Wicklow by Peter Gordon, a guy whose work I had never comeacross before. It turned out to be some of the very best landscape photography I have ever seen. We then went to The Royal Hibernian Academy to see some of their permanent collection (very good) and some other work which was part of the currently running Dublin Festival of Art (not so very good).

These ladies here seem to be in an attitude of prayer. Not surprising really considering what they were looking at. There were notices on the doors requesting adults in charge of minors to be careful about bringing the kids inside. Not surprising. What was being exhibited were a collection of what can best be described as rather lewd (some full frontals and very explicit) paintings of young buxom females in a rather Japanese anime style. The strange thing was that it was all the work of a female artist who, according to her amazingly verbose artists statement, was inverting the usual way women are represented. It did nothing of the sort of course but rather, it backed up all the old cliches and trotted out all the old stuff which could easily be regarded as porn but certainly as quite insulting to women.

Oh well. It takes all sorts I suppose.