Lipstick-coated Venus: Kelly Brook for Exhibition Magazine

Exhibition magazine is one of those expensive advertising-driven arty publications aimed at people with more money than sense.  You would have to be fairly senseless to pay €25 ($35) for a magazine  but then it does only come out annually (if indeed we see another issue at all).   Launched to coincide with Paris Fashion Week at the beginning of this year, the French-based publication intends to concentrate on just one product an issue.  This, the launch issue, concentrates on lipstick.  The very fact that you can produce a magazine that is just about lipstick tells you everything you need to know about the fashion and beauty industry, we think!

The cover features an incredibly (and, no doubt, deliberately) vulvic shot which comes across like something which is a combination of a particularly nasty piece of marine life, something from Starship Troopers and a close-up from Hustler.

The magazine itself looks like an art director's wet dream and appears to be all style and very little substance but we forgive it as they have managed to persuade Kelly Brook to strip off properly for the first time.

Now, Kelly has always been rather shy (yes really!) of revealing her body in its entirity. For a model famous for her bust there are relatively few topless shots of her.

Some may say this is because her breasts are far from perfect but we have to say we prefer her imperfections to some silicone assisted alternative.

Indeed, Kelly herself, when she posed for Playboy last year, admitted that her bust wasn't what it used to be and it is all credit to photographer Ben Hasset that he hasn't over photoshopped her.

British photographer and filmmaker Ben Hasset was born in Britain but now works in New York.  He is a regular contributor to Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.  He also has done advertising work for Omega, Dior, Givenchy, Rimmel and Chanel for whom he directed his first TV commercial.

The thing about these pictures is that Kelly has been photographed full-frontal for the first time.  She didn't even do this for Playboy but maybe she thinks this is ART.

Not only is she full-frontal but she is showing her bits in a way that Playboy wouldn't have done anyway.  She must have been aware of this so why does she choose to do this at the point in her career when she is just getting recognition in the US.  Its not something conservative film producers would be too happy about, we suspect.

Now Kelly is covered in lipstick in these pictures to accord with the theme of the magazine but presumably she didn't apply the lipstick herself and, if so, who got to colour her labia that nice dark red?

There is a whole blood-spattered tribal warpaint thing going on here as well which, no doubt, says primal things about the role of lipstick in emphasising a genital substitute. 

Anyway it's a brave thing for Kelly to do, given  the lack of Playboy-style processing and we think she looks quite splendid in her primitive warpaint.

She won't be posing like this again for a while (if ever) given that she is now pregnant so we must just make do with this fine moment in time!