The AGM's programmers had put up a prudent, and prurient, "disclaimer" at the exhibition's entrance telling, "warning," us innocent viewers that the show was not for the under-eighteen, and all the rest of us beware of the sexual material. There are also "security" cameras recording activities in the gallery - taping the expressions and behaviors of these forewarned visitors can be quite artistically stimulating. This facade of a sign was there to comply with the Human Rights Commission for pornography, which some of these pieces were, although not overtly so, and instead full of the subliminal erotica of flowing fluids and tweaking fingers. And the AGM does not want to be sued over art! Although it can do the suing for discrimination against "freedom of expression" should anyone or any body, question their judgment. Sex is a human expression after all! But government agencies and art institutions have symbiotic, almost incestual, relationships, and neither can afford to harm the other, so erotica "art" in lofty, taxpayer-funded galleries will continue for the foreseeable future.
There is a subliminal message here from me to the lucid reader (and I apologize for having to spell it out). Talk to your local councillors and municipal representatives, as have I. And if they are too "artsy" for you, preferring to convive with the best (the worst) of the AGM crowd, then write to others. Or start a blog, like me. This is MY freedom of expression! as yours could well be yours!
Even a Rodin nude, or a Caravaggio youth don't close their doors to the "under-age." There is something more than just contemplating sculpted genitals that makes classical works bigger than porn. Kenneth Clark wrote a book titled The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, to help us to see a little beyond our natural prudishness. But his historical samples had very few protrusions to cover up, covered up as they were! True artists, and truly artistic cultures, know that some elements detract from a piece of art. The pagan Greeks and Romans themselves, who gloried (and worshiped) nudity reduced their naked gods' appendages to metaphorically boyish sizes.
And so here is one of the images standing under the banner of a "disclaimer." And as its creator purports to stand n the gaze of "art" she clearly used slimy metaphors to depict her erotic urges.
But the "metaphor" stops with the slimy flower (normally a beautiful peony). Unlike what the Greek masters and our classcal ancestors would have done, this photographer showed us her REAL finger to show a REAL action. Such is the impatience and small mindedness of our contemporary artists that they cannot see that people will see their intent if they, the artists, are intelligent and artistic enough.
This photographer spent time on the slime, the shape the exact roundness of the peonies center, the supersaturated film for the supersaturated pink, but she couldn't, wouldn't, metaphorize her elongated index.
Below is a photographic image that the AGM put on their main website, their Instagram, their twitter page, and their Facebook as part of their publicity.
Finger, from the series grass, peonie, bum.
© Maisie Cousins.
Photoworks: Is the use of close up frames a way of heightening the themes of intimacy and voyeurism in your work?But the interesting thing is that they have put NO labels for this image on any of their "social media." And there is no identifying information of who the photographer is.
Maisie Cousins: Absolutely, it’s also what I find interesting as getting unnaturally close up to things really excites me, you get to see every detail you would miss with your naked eye.
Text source: Interview: Maisie Cousins
Published on 18 May 2017
Photoworks
Turns out the the internet has ample resources and a "google image" search produced this, Maisie Cousins, who has posted this same image on her website under the heading grass, peony, bum.
Her name on the internet produced this interview and a title to the piece: Finger.
I had nailed it! I wrote the whole piece before finally finding the titled work on the Photoworks interview page.
Why is the AGM not precisely titling and referencing its images? It could simply be that they are working with interns and volunteers. But surely someone has to review the material before it goes on a public website?
I think it is more than a careless (or overworked?) administration.
If there is a title visibly placed on the AGM's various online sites, parents and prudes will start to realize that the pretty pink flower is actually a clitoris, and no matter how many disclaimers the AGM may put on their physical gallery space, some will say that a "virtual" space is just as real as an actual place. And pornographic finger paintings cannot be allowed on either of them.
Freedom of expression, curtailed by billboards of disclaimers and potential lawsuits, begins to rear the ugly truth.
Maisie Cousins: I don’t think anybody would see my work if it wasn’t for the Internet. What I think is so great about social media is that you broaden your audience – the public, the art world, the commercial world, other artists, they all get to see it. It makes art less exclusive which I think is so important and needed for art to progress. I also think it’s extremely important right now with the current government in the UK making huge cuts to the arts. [Photoworks interview]