On Friday evening Mr Monkey caught a train into Manchester and trotted along to the Royal Exchange Theatre for the preview of
Reality TV, a new exhibition in the Mezzanine Gallery.
He scampered up the stairs into the gallery, made sure his humans had orange juice instead of wine, selected a nice bit of cake for them, and joined the throng.
Reality TV is the work of David Dunnico, a photographer from Manchester. It's a collection of black and white photographs about CCTV surveillance cameras throughout the United Kingdom, with not just pictures of the cameras themselves, but also graffiti relating to CCTV and the insides of CCTV control rooms.
Apparently Mr Dunnico got used to being told he was acting suspiciously while he was photographing the cameras.
Mr Monkey thought it was an interesting approach to an ambiguous subject - opinion polls show that a majority of people support the use of CCTV and a majority of people fear the loss of civil liberties - but thinks you need the extra information at the project website to make sense of some of the photo-captions.
Mr Monkey was impressed by the quality of the photography, and was particularly taken by the picture of a camera being marked by the crossing of two vapour trails.
After he'd looked at all the pictures, and his humans had drunk their juice and eaten their cake, Mr Monkey scampered out onto the streets to be tracked by CCTV cameras.
On the way out he was warned that Big Brother was watching him. On reflection he decided that it was just possible that the warning was something to do with the Royal Exchange's current production being a play based on George Orwell's
1984 and wasn't directed at Mr Monkey personally.
Reality TV is on display in the Mezzanine Gallery until March 27th.
