Sunday, 24th March 2.00am GMT

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Saturday, 23rd March - Viggo Mortensen Exhibition

It was with some trepidation that I entered the exhibition. I'm too much of a techy pleb to be a great art lover, and the idea that an actor would have an exhibition of his artwork and photography and that it might actually be rather good didn't enter my head. Before meeting at the exhibition we had been given the opportunity, by LadyOBloom, to reserve signed copies of Viggo's book containing pictures of the work at the exhibition. I had politely declined. After seeing the exhibition I was rusing to the head of the queue to grab my copy

The exhibition featured a mixture of beautiful abstract paintings, colour photographs and black and white photographs.The photographs were a mixture of blurred impressionistic work and formal portraits of some of the cast from "The Lord of the Rings" My favourites by far were the abstract artwork collages that were a stunning mixture of ideas, with artwork, written text and sometimes cardboard shapes assembled together in large dramatic sweeps.

The black and white portraiture work was also very impressive. Needless to say these were the photo's that most of the fans gathered around. Copies of the Elijah Wood portrait were available for sale - limited to just 25 prints and both Moochelas and Jo have secured copies (although at $800/throw they are definitely into the art rather than fan collectibles category).

I was particularly impressed with the portrait of Dominic Monaghan and was disappointed to see that this was not included in the book of Viggo's work (although an equally good colour portrait is) so fans will have to put up with the blurry sunlight-reflected version shown here (I knew I should have taken a polarizing filter with me to the States!).

You can get an idea for how big these portraits were by looking at the size of my (unintended) reflection in the Elijah Wood picture I liked the abstract colour photo's in general, but one of two of these were dark and gory and they were the only pieces in the exhibition I didn't like. What really impressed me about the exhibition was the variety of work on show.

Viggo's book "SignLanguage", published by Smart Art Press in both hardback and softback, ISBN no. 1-889195-49-9 It makes a great "coffee table" book and represents incredible value for money. Highly recommended. Click here to continue on to Pub Moot photo's