Barking Mad - Or a Weird and Wonderful Perth Arts Scene

The Sunday Times Perth
21 June 2009

A giant sculpture that caused an uproar in Sydney is bound for Perth. Titled, The Good Boy, the Fibreglass figure has the head of a dog and the naked body of a man, complete with genitals.

At 1.8m high and 3.2m long, the sculpture and its generously proportioned appendage will be hard to miss when they go on display outside Subiaco gallery Linton and Kay Contemporary next month.
Artists Gillie and Marc Schattner, said their sculpture, part of the exhibition, The Dog in Us All, was never meant to offend .

"The point we're making and the whole idea, is to show the relationship between dog and man, Mr Schattner said. "it isn't trying to be offensive and, quite frankly, it's a penis. Half of the world's got one, you shouldn't be too upset about it. But they were and then we had to justify why put a penis on a man, and our answer to that was, well, if you took the penis off it would be a bit abnormal."

Within hours of the sculpture being displayed in the ritzy Sydney suburb of Woollahra, the council and police had received complaints

I Love My Dog and My Dog Loves Me Exhibition at Richard Martin Gallery

MiSociety - Images: Bill Ranken
18 March 2009

Bryce Courtney reduced the packed room at the Richard Martin Gallery to tears as he related his own ‘doggie tale’ from when he was a boy growing up in an orphanage in South Africa.

As Gillie and Marc Schattner’s canine portraits bore witness from the walls eyes were dabbed as the dog loving patrons remembered their own loving four legged friends. On a day when almost every media outlet had cruised to the gallery to take shots of the huge four ‘armed’ sculpture out front it proved yet again that ‘man’s best friend’ is still very much exactly that.