This evening Ms. Lucy Forwood gave an interesting, although short, presentation of her research into Vietnamese propaganda. The images are on loan with the Dogma group in HCMC. The collection is owned in part by Mai Gallery in Hanoi. In approaching the topic, Lucy arranged the images according to "virtues" such as courage and determination. To give a historical footing, propaganda from the West including Stalinist Soviet Union and fascist Germany were included. The bonus were printed international propaganda found on the back of some of the Vietnamese prints - Hungary, North Korea and Poland.

Unfortunately due to some last minute cancellations the audience was no larger than six people at any one time. I'm sure if there were a larger crowd that the dialogue after would have been interesting. Many interesting issues regarding ownership of images, concerns of the original artists, the absence of similar propoganda in the Diem regime were raised.

As I wrote earlier about ALBB, its good to see that they are providing a space for interesting thought and dialogue.