Sex and spirituality are being celebrated in the Philippines this month. The Arts In The City festival has brought together dancers, musicians, artists and many more of the international creative community for live performances, workshops and exhibitions. Among the attractions in Pasay City is “Body and Soul”, a show by sculptors Agnes Arellano and Duddley Diaz. The follow-up to their 2007 “Angels and Goddesses” exhibition, this collection examines the sacred nature of sexuality and is inspired by myth, religion and the erotic temples in Khajuraho, Northern India.

“Being an ardent student of the tantras and longtime lover of the human form,” said Arellano, “I was in bliss as I recreated some inspiring scenes, zooming into particular details in extreme close-up and syncretising these through the church windows of my Catholic girlhood…”

Using the image of the monstrance (the vessel in which communion wafers are presented) Diaz also attempts to reconcile Roman Catholicism with overtly sexual deities such as Eros and Psyche: “My thoughts wanted to go as far back in time as possible to trace the history of erotic literature in the old world… The monstrance itself is in bronze and contains details of some of the erogenous parts of the body in alabaster. From afar, the luminosity of the alabaster piece and the monstrance-inspired motif puts us in a quasi-sacred state or an ecclesiastical setting.”

Read more about the Arts in the City fetsival from the Philippine Star here, and see more from the Galleria Duemila here.

The latest Dominatrix “memoir” to be released is denounced at its own launch party. This could either be a publicity stunt or a promotional disaster. I suppose we’ll never know…

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

‘The story behind Madame Lash’s no-show at her book launch varies wildly depending upon who you talk to. On Monday night the Sydney dominatrix left the author of her biography Madam Lash: Gretel Pinniger’s scandalous life of sex, art and bondage ”standing at the altar” when, at the last minute, she deputed her chauffeur to read a statement denouncing the book as lies. ”The chauffeur read out a statement saying it was character assassination,” says the jilted author Sam Everingham, who, though sympathetic to his subject, is having none of it. ”[But] I gave her a copy of the manuscript in October, and she read it in January, and we workshopped it together, and she did an edit with me.” Everingham says that Ms Lash was ”excited and happy” with the advance copy he sent her. He says the real reason she has backed away from the book, and all subsequent publicity, is because her financial security has become imperilled. Everingham said the only income she has received is $1000 to $3000 a month through the estate of a deceased patron (named by Private Sydney’s Andrew Hornery as the billionaire Lord Paul Hamlyn), and that Ms Lash’s brother told him she feared financial ruin if she backed a book in which that relationship was mentioned. To put it mildly, Ms Lash disputes his account. She would not be drawn about her finances, but told the Diary she was neither happy nor excited about an advance copy. ”I can’t begin to tell you the outrage it is. I cannot read the book without total nausea. I’ve got to page 84. It’s like identity fraud. I thought I was getting an art biography.”’