Rodney Pople's art is erotic, exotic and designed to shock
Elizabeth Fortescue From:
The Daily Telegraph
September 10, 2010 12:00AM
The works by Sydney artist Rodney Pople go on exhibition in Paddington next week with a warning on the gallery's door they "may offend".
Pople's exhibition, titled Bellini 21c, includes a work called Altarpiece in which the figures in the famous Bellini altarpiece in Venice are obscured by an image of a woman being penetrated from behind and having oral sex.
Another work features the altarpiece with a photograph of a woman exposing her genitals.
Pople photographed the altar piece last year, then used digital technology to add pornography taken from magazines found by his wife, curator Felicity Fenner.
He made large photo prints of the hybrid image, and added oil paint.
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The artworks - top price $65,000 for a painting titled Bellini Altarpiece (triptych) - are operatically beautiful but deeply unsettling.
Pople admits the works were deliberately provocative, but said he wanted to highlight moral corruption within Western civilisation's established "hierarchies", not just the church but politics and business.
The porn star represented a "contemporary version" of the Madonna, representing society's degradation.
"My paintings challenge the facade of our politically correct society by hinting, with an unabashed use of fiction and exaggeration, what might lie beneath the surface."
Australian Galleries, where the exhibition opens on Tuesday, took legal advice and posted the warning sign.
"We just don't want a Bill Henson situation," gallery director Stuart Purves said, referring to Bill Henson's 2008 images of naked adolescents.
No calls from Australian or world leaders accusing the artist of gross insensitivity that could lead to Christians rioting in the streets committing acts of terrorism,no these are Christian icons,and as we all know Christianity is fair game for any and all to desecrate at will in the name of ART.
How lucky the world and these “artists” are, that Christianity really is a “ Religion of Peace”
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