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Portrait of the artist as a young dog

Sunday 16 February 1997 00:02 GMT
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Picasso had a soft spot for pigeons, but he didn't let them mix his paint: artists like animals, but they like them to know their place. But now a Shoreditch gallery is staging an exhibition by Kali, a playful young golden labrador named after the Vedic goddess of destruction. Kali has eschewed the obvious path of creating piss flowers a la Helen Chadwick, working instead with pre-formed materials like plastic nail brushes, which she chews to the point of aesthetic satisfaction. Those shapeless things that used to be slippers and rubber rings, lying on your patio in a soup of bone marrow-flavoured gob: they're art.

Kali has sunk her canines into a contemporary Greek icon, her only religious work to date. She applies herself to her work with "a singular viciousness free from any form of self-consciousness," enthuses her agent Anthony Rendall.

It's thought to be the world's first art show by a dog, and the media will be sniffing round Kali's opening. All of which adds up to kennelfuls of cash, or at least enough to keep her in Winalot for some time to come. John Windsor

Kali Sculpture is at 5 Old Nichol Street, London E2 7HR, from 28 February.

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