Closer to home, proprietors of the Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland must have rubbed theirs with glee when an exhibition of photographs of Mongrel Mob members made front pages. No publicity is bad in the art market. The outraged are lambs to the slaughter. "Photographer exhibits portraits" is not news. "Family of young father disgusted his alleged killer is glorified in photo exhibition" is.
Very properly, the gallery refused to withdraw the portrait. It's a striking image, as are the others in the show of people who adopt a highly detailed symbolic group aesthetic for reasons I can only imagine - to proclaim identity and belonging maybe? It may be frightening but it's fascinating to look at. The photographer has done viewers too intimidated to stare at Mongrel Mob members in the flesh a service by having the courage to obtain the images so we can all see.
Anyway, why should art record only the approved good and glorious and the conventionally beautiful? It's a bit like the mistake of expecting meathead rugby players to be saintly role models.
There are paintings of beheadings, rapes, wars, villains, crucifixions and other horrors, even a famous scream. Certainly ugliness can be beautiful. I'm still thinking about whether beauty is possible devoid of morality. Truth though, if such exists, might have a terrible beauty of its own.
Meanwhile the pre-election pace is cranking up.
Labour's Finance spokesperson David Parker actually made his party look credible at last with a positive economic policy designed to rein in inflation, the housing market, interest, greed, inequity, offshore losses and the dollar. Hallelujah!
National Cabinet ministers' actions allowed the smell of perceived cronyism to cling to the idea that donations to the party might buy subsequent trade or justice favours, which I hear is considered perfectly acceptable behaviour in other cultures. Not ethically a good look here though.
The sudden ban on legal highs until they're tested is no solution to the anomalies in regulating widespread public use of legal and illegal recreational drugs. Kneejerk pre-election reactions to baying mobs are always unwise. The first hiccup - animal testing - already threatens to provoke another baying mob.
Just as the US could surely have found a shooter capable of carrying out an execution, could not human guinea pigs willing to test legal highs be recruited from the queues outside zombie shops? Isn't that what they're paying to do anyway?
