Y'know, you'd think an exhibition with the byline "famous display of real human bodies" would be a guaranteed winner. It's like the curator equivalent of tossing a lesbian scene into a soap opera - it's pretty hard to fuck it up.

But, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. (*Boom tish*)

For a chilled / wholesome Sunday activity, the group hauled ass to The Amazing Human Body Exhibition at the Docklands. One of my mates billed to me as an RPA-esque traveling roadshow, with mountains of stuff like "dead bodies that are sliced and diced and spaced apart" and "heaps of fetuses at different stages of development". Yes, this is our idea of wholesome.

According to the exhibition itself, "The Amazing Human Body Exhibition is an innovative juxtaposition of science and culture - a captivating display of our body that is amazing, astounding, spectacular and sometimes confronting!"

After tossing our $23 entry to the ticket chicket, we all went into 'school kid / excursion' mode and literally gasped at the first display - right in front of us were the remains of some dead guy, his presentability sealed by a method called plastination. Yeah, replacing your blood with plastic. Makes a killer sight though - here's the first dude:



So we ooh'd and aah'd over this guy for a couple of minutes, marveling at the muscle structure, the technique they used to preserve the bodies, and most animatedly, why his testicles are so far apart (see below).



Rushing round the corner into the exhibition proper, we found it was not more than a smallish circular room with a few more dead people statues scattered here and there, and the walls lined with random body parts in glass cases. Underwhelming is a word that springs to mind. Ripped off is another.

While it was a little interesting to casually peruse the body parts ("Hey look! A pancreas!"), the presentation was totally lackluster. Here's the body part. Here's a sign saying what it is. ISN'T THAT AMAZING, YOU HAVE ONE OF THESE.

I never thought I'd say it, but even the defiled plastic corpses got a bit tedious. Suspect the curator was switched on in this regard too - the poses, while supposedly 'aesthetically posed in natural movements', got a little flamboyant as you advanced through the room. Like this recreation of Michael Jackson's thriller, including his famous crotch grab:



Or to cadavers just doing what comes naturally and settling into a relaxing game of chess:



Or, my favourite, showing off that awesome bod now the gift of death finally brought you down to your target weight:



And that's pretty much the extent of the whole shebang. Can't say I learnt a whole lot, except that $23 for a Docklands exhibition is a total rip. Oh, and never, ever, donate your body to science - one day it might be you that ends up being permanently 'aesthetically posed' doing a cheeky badminton serve for the viewing pleasure of the unwashed masses (and certain sneaky buggers who break the rules and take photos on their mobile's camera).