Kerre Woodham: A load of rubbish

It's little wonder that graduates from the University of Life have such contempt for the inhabitants of the ivory towers of academia when you look at a couple of news items over the past couple of days.

First up, we had the $15,000 Waikato National Contemporary Art award going to, quite literally, a pile of rubbish.

Berlin-based Dane Mitchell sent an email to Waikato Museum staff, asking them to collect the binned wrappings of entries from the other contestants and tip it all on to the floor. Voila. Art.

The other entrants were spitting sparks and crying foul and for the most part, New Zealanders have been scathing of the effort.

The director of the museum, Kate Vusoniwailala, is delighted with the controversy, saying the decision was an excellent one which helped achieve the objective of getting people talking about art. As in "any publicity is good publicity", Kate? I thought the art world had moved beyond that.

Ten years ago, British artist Tracey Emin generated howls of outrage when her piece for the Turner Art prize consisted of her unmade, dirty bed, her underwear, a couple of crumpled fag packets and some used condoms.

The artist seeing detritus as art is just so last century.

Still, the prize has been awarded, and Kate Vusoniwailala is delirious with excitement that her little gallery is on the map.

And no taxpayer money was sacrificed in the awarding of the prize, so I guess we can move on.

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To another piece of nonsense - this time a study from Victoria University that told the world what we already know - men notice a woman's breasts before they notice her face.

Blow me down. Who'd have thought? Of course men look at women's boobs. Women look at women's boobs. Hard not to when they're the sticky out bit at the front of females and especially if they're trussed up and out and looking like an activated airbag. Why do you think women get boob jobs? It's not so they can fade into the background and be ignored.

The author of the study, PhD student Barnaby Dixon, used Victoria University's $60,000 eye-tracking device to monitor the reactions of 36 men as they looked at images of naked women. Nearly half of them noticed the women's knockers first, while a third checked out her midriff. Barely a fifth noticed the woman's face at first glance.

This tosh, which Dixon concedes could be meaningless research, is part of an ongoing study into the links between appearance and attractiveness.

Why didn't he pop down to his local pub on a Friday night? He could have just asked the punters there what they were looking at when scantily dressed young things wobbled off to the loos. It would have saved a whole lot of the university's time and money, even if he did have to spring for a round or two.

* www.kerrewoodham.com