Hi, today is , and I'm in Dublin. Care to say hello?

As part of my attempts to get my self out there and experience some of the things that London has to offer, I recently went to an art gallery to see an exhibit by a German artist named Albert Oehlen. Unfortunately this turned out to be a bit of a disapointment for me.

There was an explanation at the entrance to the exhibit which said "Oehlen focuses on the process of painting itself, making visible its fundamental elements rather than exploring painting as autobiographical expression". Now I don't really know what this means because to me it seemed like the bulk of the work displayed on the ground floor was just a random montage of paint. In the dozen or so pictures visible it was rare that I could make out any kind of image on the canvas and more often than not it just looked like a bunch of blank paint on top of grey paint with maybe some florescent orange thrown in for good measure.

Upstairs, while being completely different, wasn't much better. It was in two sections with the first being reminiscent of a 12 year olds art project of making a collage out of random images found in a magazine. I will admit that some of them were quite funny (a cut out of a baby chair stuck on to an add for living room furniture or fashion models stuck on top of rennaisance statues), but they did seem to be anything more than an intelligent and sarcastic teenager (of which I knew numerous) could have come up with it.

The final section was probably the best. It had about a dozen 6"x6" canvas' that actually had images in them! Shock horror. Most amusing was "Almost naked" which was a set of male legs from the waist down standign in a bathroom with just a pair of boxer shorts on. It was only when I got in closer to the painting that I realised the boxer shorts were a little bit transparent! Not exactly the kind of image I wanted to see but it was still a good piece.

All in all, I'd say the best thing about my visit was that it has confirmed that I am not an arty person - not in the least! Every once in a while I get the idea that I have confined myself to a limited number of activities and that I should make more of an effort to experience other things. That's how I ended up at this gallery.

Doing things like this serve their purpose in that it kills off my concerns of getting pigeon holed. It points out to me that there are things I like and there are things I don't. Simple as that. It leaves me free to really enjoy and appreciate the activities that work for me and stops me feeling guilty about not doing the other stuff.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not cutting myself off from art completely. There are a number of things I've seen over the years that I do like. I think for me though, art needs to have a visible image or message. I don't think there should be a need to have an art student, a guide book or at worst the artist themselves beside you in order to understand what the piece is about. In my, admitidly, alternatively educated opinion, a piece of art should be able to stand on its own merrits regardless of its surroundings.

I will continue to keep myself open to ideas and will continue to check out exhibits and galleries every once in a while. I'm going to try and get myself to see more and varied things in London and while musicals and plays are among the obvious choices, there is a large number of museums and galleris to see. Further, given that a few of the people I have dealings with currently in London work in the art business there is no reason not to pick their brains and go see whats out there.

For now however, the art will wait. Next up is a visit to a play. A suggestion of checking out some of the fringe theatres brought up a list of interesting sounding plays and an evening out is already being planned for the end of the month. Fingers crossed some other people will be interested as it is always nice to be able to discuss the play afterwards. Stay tuned and I'll try let you know how the night goes.