Albury Council says a parental guidance warning at the exhibition’s entrance is sufficient warning though there is no indication that some of the images used to create a much larger mosaic include explicit naked poses and sexual acts.

The thumbnail tiles can be seen up to 1m away. The confronting works by Spanish artist Joan Fontcuberta come to the Border after being shown in Paris, New York and Sydney. While other artists traditionally use paints, pencils or charcoal, Fontcuberta uses Google to make up montages by tapping words into an image search function which chooses the thumbnail tile images.

He then uses free software to assemble them into the final work. One piece in the Googlegrams exhibition is of Fontcuberta’s wife, with the words in this case being drawn from Bob Dylan’s Just Like A Woman. Some of the keywords include girl, curls, woman and amphetamine. The result is the tiles not only include naked women but graphic pictures of various sex acts. A black and white sign at the entrance to the exhibition says parental guidance is recommended.

“This exhibition contains images or objects that may offend,” the sign reads.

Yesterday Albury Council’s acting community and recreation director Ros Walls said it was an amazing exhibition of international renown.

“Joan Fontcuberta is one of Spain’s most prominent and innovative artists,” she said.

“It has been most popular since opening at the Albury Art Gallery and we are really pleased with the audience response to a show of such international prominence.

“We are aware that some of the images on both a micro and macro scale may be confronting to some and have managed this by posting appropriate signage to alert visitors to that fact and to urge parental guidance as required.

“It’s quite an amazing exhibition giving the medium of photography a whole new treatment generated by google images from the internet.”

Other images in the exhibition include US Private Lynndie England humiliating a prisoner in the Abu Ghraib detention centre, an Iraqi man whose head has been turned to pulp by an exploding bullet and Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.

The image of Fontcuberta’s wife is the only one that uses the pornographic thumbnails.

The exhibition runs until March 8.

Last year the art gallery was forced to remove naked images of a teenage girl taken by leading Australian artist Bill Henson.

Find out more > Source: http://www.bordermail.com.au