Fame Game a Snap - Mosman Daily
10 September, 2008
If you pride yourself on being a celebrity spotter, head straight to Mosman Art Gallery there's hundreds of celebrities on show.
There's Britney Spears, George Clooney Lindsay Lohan, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Johnny Depp, Princess Di, Michael Jackson and many more.
As Mosman photographer Graham Monro points out, it's a reflection on our society that so many of us can identify so many of them.
The gallery is hosting a travelling exhibition called New Deities: Art and the Cult of Celebrity, put together by the Devonport Regional Gallery in Tasmania
The exhibition features artworks that satirise or explore the cult of celebrity and the public's insatiable appetite for images whether they are of movie stars or young teenagers trying to get their picture on the internet.
One of the artworks is a collage of hundreds of celebrity images, another is a series of photographs of Amanda Lepore, an American who has had more plastic surgery than hot breakfasts.
One artwork is simply a scene repeated over and over again of Tom Cruise about to kiss his girl in the movie Top Gun. There is also three large paintings of Lohan, Paris Hilton and rap artist P. Diddy that outbrush the art of airbrushing.
Monro, who often photographs celebrity weddings, including the recent nuptials of Guy Sebastian, is giving a talk at the gallery this Sunday at 2pm. Monro said shooting celebrity weddings had its hazards, including being "papped" (when the paparazzi get an unauthorised shot). “As a wedding photographer you don't want to get their media face. You want their love face, their passion," he said. Despite his fondness for celebrity nuptials, Monro said he found society's obsession with celebrities obscene. “It is bizarre that we so obsessed with celebrities, particularly when they fall from grace," he said.
Monro believes the exhibition is a fantastic way to highlight this obsession.
The exhibition, which features all Australian artists, continues until October 12.
Courtesy Mosman Daily 2008