The Trip Part 4: Heeeeeeeeey MONA
Husband and I enjoy looking at Art together, so it was on his suggestion that we extended this wedding trip to include a quick dash to Hobart to visit MONA - the Museum of Old and New Art.
There are two ways to get to MONA, by road or by ferry. I flinch at the idea of water transport, but felt reasonably sure I could tolerate a 30 minute river journey and was glad I did. We had a good view of boats, houses, trees, and huge industrial complexes. Ah, the serenity. Fortunately it was a smooth trip and we arrived without incident at the dock at the base of a huge cliff into which was cut a mountain of steps. It being early in the day I decided to cast caution to the wind and climb them all.
Probably shouldn’t have done that.
Anyway, in we went and were issued with our headphones and digital guides. I’m not a fan of audio guides, so I don’t usually bother with them, nor do I have a lot of patience with lengthy notes explaining artwork, but this was a reasonable compromise. It certainly improved the look of the displays to not have labels and chunks of text crowding them out. Best of all a dick-and-balls icon allowed one to isolate the wankiest of the art notes and enjoy them in all their glory, unfettered by the mere dronings of pure information. The device included an option to save your particular path through the gallery and email it to you as a personalised tour.
The gallery was excavated out of the cliff, and wore its rocky origins with pride.
Flash photography was not permitted, but I think that helped to give a feel for the atmosphere of the place.
I liked it. Very Bond Villainesque. Naturally I attempted some closeups of the rock walls, which presumably made me look a little weird:
You’d think that a bit of odd behaviour would have helped me to blend in, but the crowd that day looked suburbanly average with a vengeance.
The whole place was kept very dark so we didn’t attempt many pictures inside. There are catalogues to handle that sort of thing after all, but I did have a go at photographing a pile of granite headstones, if only for standard pretty rock purposes:
That’s as bright as I could get it, even with post processing. The work itself nearly filled a large hall, so there were tons of stone in all, surmounted by a giant worm. Something to do with Death *shrug*.
The Old Art was respectably old, with a scattering of antiquities placed apparently at random amongst the modern installations. I liked incongruity of it. The New Art was not as shocking as I’d been led to believe, or maybe it was and I’m hard to shock. Graphic and unusual disposition of people’s Bits won’t upset me, and there’s not much you can say about Death that’s a surprise, with one possible exception. The Suicide Machine was sadly out of order. This is a replica of the equipment and software used to deliver a fatal dose of painkillers. You could hook yourself up (shy of actually piercing the skin) and work your way through the software until it informed you that the drugs had been administered and you were almost certainly dead and probably in no longer in any condition to read the instructions. I’m told it’s quite an experience and was curious to see how it felt, having been on the cusp as it were.
But the suicide machine was out of order :-( .
I heartily approved of the beanbags that allowed one to watch semi-pornographic experimental videos projected onto the ceiling. Very comfy, but a little hard to escape. The beanbags were big enough for two, but sadly I missed the opportunity to share the experience uncomfortably with a stranger.
We also managed to miss out one of the more famous installations, the poo machine, which ingests food and produces poo. The Cloaca Machine I think it’s called. Not too troubled by that as I never expected to see the whole place. What we did see was plenty entertaining enough. Not being shocked per se was fine by me, and it still left plenty of room for lively conversation with Husband about the merits of various works. I loved it when we each responded to the first sight of a work with a synchronised “Ooooooookay”.
We attempted to ask A Nice Stranger to take a photo of the pair of us, but they got carried away with artistic endeavour and none of the shots were useable. I didn’t even know my camera was capable of such things. In the end we managed a flashless selfie, which will remain gloriously uncropped to celebrate its DIY origins:
Last stop before we left was the gift shop, which had a few interesting things. About the only thing in the whole place that made my stomach churn a bit was soap cast from the Bits of a named woman. If it was a plaster cast I’d not bat an eyelid, but soap is something intensely intimate, and that felt All Wrong. So yay, I guess, I’m not completely dead inside after all. Maybe if they’d supplied the model’s personality profile with the soap I’d feel that we weren’t strangers, and it would be ok. Maybe.
I did catch a snap of some seriously gorgeous corsets for sale:
Unfortunately the low light made for poor photographs, but they were really lovely.
It was nearly time for our return ferry and I was pretty knackered by this point, so we asked about the alternative route down to the ferry landing, expecting to be taken to a freight elevator. Instead we were given a private golf buggy tour of the back of the campus, including the sight of David Walsh’s parking spot, which was marked “God”. The neighbouring spot was reserved for his wife, and marked “God’s Mistress”. Ah, to be insanely rich. Although, I suppose there’s nothing to stop us marking the spots in our own garage… “Catmobile” and “Mr Catmobile” perhaps?
The last stretch of switchback path to the bottom of the cliff and an alternative ferry landing was mildly alarming, particularly at the very end which was completed in reverse. We got to have an interesting chat with the nice lad who drove, so that was a bonus. It seemed to take a very long time for the ferry to pick us up, but picked up we were and it was back to Hobart for us.
So that was MONA. Definitely worth the trip and would happily go back to cover some missed ground and spend more time in some of the rooms.