Gay Nelson artist Alex Ouston presented a ‘cock drag’ inspired piece for his final Bachelor of Arts and Media project at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. He was forced to tone it down. He tells us what happened. Tell me about the pieces you created? For your final year of the NMIT degree you are encouraged to develop your art practice in an area of interest or inquiry, for myself my work has been about gender and sexuality orientation and what is the term all about when referred to "coming out of the closet", as a gay male I have been through this process and it was part of my degree that I investigated the constructions of language and history and how we are influenced and controlled by society in behaving in so called socially acceptable behaviour. My first experiments for the year, I was working with gay imagery directly from pornographic magazines, and this further supported my inquiry into what is considered a figurative portrait, erotic or pornography, all of this is art, it is staged, performed and created for a purpose, but to what degree can people actually say they like pornography and what is socially acceptable. My final piece was taken from an experience known as 'cock drag' a form of penis adornment, through recreating some pieces as a visual discussion for a gallery environment with the removal of the flesh "a naked model" I was trying to address the NMIT policy of being in a public exhibition space. By adding a Q Jacqui Stanford - 5th January 2013