[lj idol] week seventeen | "down on my knees, I wanna take you there..."
[feels like flying]
Over budget and overdue, the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) on the banks of the River Derwent in Hobart, Tasmania, certainly had the northern suburbs locals talking well before its doors finally opened in January, 2011. Resolutely carved into the ancient sandstone cliffs of the Berridale Peninsula, it is a mostly underground edifice that divides public opinion.
But it’s not until you cross visionary David Walsh’s tennis court shaped version of a welcome mat and descend the three story spiral staircase of industrial metal and glass into the belly of the beast itself that questions are asked.
Asked, but rarely answered.
“It’s an ‘art’ museum”, you’ll be told. Fingers will bend around the word art.
“Is this ‘art’?”
To your left, in a room dedicated to nothing else, a sizable mechanical contraption, titled Cloaca Professional, replicates the human digestive system. It is fed three times a day and produces waste that must be disposed of. It smells like a public toilet block. It is meant to.
Colloquially, we locals call it the poo machine.
“Is this ‘art’?”
Further in, an oversized painting pointedly draws focus to the crudely constructed vagina of a transgender woman. Adjacent, a close-up photograph of a scalp reveals the no doubt intentionally phallic image of a fresh laceration made by an ice pick. On the floor beneath both, a replica of the eviscerated remains of a real suicide bomber.
Cast entirely in dark chocolate.
“Is this ‘art’?”
David Walsh made his multi-millions betting on horses. No; a lie. David Walsh made his multi-millions by creating mathematical algorithms to calculate which horse was going to win which race. Funded by the proceeds of carefully calculated 'gambling', MONA, his self-confessed Disneyland for adults, is a dystopian playground that dares explore the most primitive reaches of the collective imagination. It is the world’s largest publically accessible private art collection and Tasmanians get in for free.
Why?
Because David grew up here and he knows those in the surrounding low socio-economic streets won’t come otherwise. MONA was never about the money, which is lucky because it doesn’t make any. MONA is about subversive entertainment and hedonistic overindulgence. MONA is about challenging perceptions and dividing opinions. It’s about sexuality and religion and humanity and war. It’s about pushing, pushing, pushing boundaries until they’re so far behind you, you can’t even remember the point you stepped off and into the labyrinthine void.
It is possible to argue it’s not even about the art. It’s about the conversations the art triggers.
Is a room full of television screens broadcasting random strangers singing Madonna’s Immaculate Collection ‘art’? Let the door close softly behind you as you enter, grab a bean-bag and a position on the floor, and try not to lose whole portions of your day in mesmerised wonderment and then get back to me.
The modern, illegal, explicitly sexual, vulgar, violent and just plain old weird sit juxtaposed and judgment free alongside ancient Egyptian sarcophagi dating back centuries, and dynastic antiquities full of historical significance.
“This is ‘art’?”
Locals aren’t unfamiliar with the question: there’s a giant dinosaur turd shaped 'sculpture' on the banks of the highway not five minutes from MONA after-all. But it’s only now they’ve been moved to answer it.
Or try to.
Sidney Nolan’s Snake, all 1620 individually painted pieces of it, is “definitely art”. The installation depicting Dr Phillip Nitschke’s Suicide Machine, complete with couch to sit on and invitation to simulate your own chosen death, perhaps the ultimate act of human control, “definitely isn’t”.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter.
MONA is not about telling its visitors what to think. MONA is impetus, MONA is invitation. It is not an answer.
Literally.
Because nothing is labelled.
When you enter, you’re given an iPod that uses GPS to track your path through the maze of rooms and floors and open spaces. If you choose to, you can click on various links that will provide details of the individual pieces; artist, era, geographical location, title. Further clicking and you might get a rationale. Maybe. Probably not though.
For the cautious, or for those with children, a dedicated map provides a route that ensures you steer clear of C-nts and Other Conversations, 150 plaster-casts of female genitalia, and instead visit Chen Zhen’s trampoline rigged to a collection of meditation bells. Jump on it and make music.
Alternatively, grab a glass of Muse pinot grigio, or a Moo Brew beer marketed as “not for bogans”, both hand-crafted on-site, and while you’re waiting in line to have your heart-rate recorded by an illegal, pulsing light bulb imported all the way from China, ask the guy behind you or the seven year old in front of you;
“Is this art?”
And then listen as they give you their answer.
*
previously on...
introduction | jayus | the missing stair | in another castle | nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent | build a better mouse-trap | step on a crack, break your mother's back | yes, and... | the recency effect | barrel of monkeys | open topic | confession from the chair | chekhov's gun | a terrible beauty has been born
Over budget and overdue, the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) on the banks of the River Derwent in Hobart, Tasmania, certainly had the northern suburbs locals talking well before its doors finally opened in January, 2011. Resolutely carved into the ancient sandstone cliffs of the Berridale Peninsula, it is a mostly underground edifice that divides public opinion.
But it’s not until you cross visionary David Walsh’s tennis court shaped version of a welcome mat and descend the three story spiral staircase of industrial metal and glass into the belly of the beast itself that questions are asked.
Asked, but rarely answered.
“It’s an ‘art’ museum”, you’ll be told. Fingers will bend around the word art.
“Is this ‘art’?”
To your left, in a room dedicated to nothing else, a sizable mechanical contraption, titled Cloaca Professional, replicates the human digestive system. It is fed three times a day and produces waste that must be disposed of. It smells like a public toilet block. It is meant to.
Colloquially, we locals call it the poo machine.
“Is this ‘art’?”
Further in, an oversized painting pointedly draws focus to the crudely constructed vagina of a transgender woman. Adjacent, a close-up photograph of a scalp reveals the no doubt intentionally phallic image of a fresh laceration made by an ice pick. On the floor beneath both, a replica of the eviscerated remains of a real suicide bomber.
Cast entirely in dark chocolate.
“Is this ‘art’?”
David Walsh made his multi-millions betting on horses. No; a lie. David Walsh made his multi-millions by creating mathematical algorithms to calculate which horse was going to win which race. Funded by the proceeds of carefully calculated 'gambling', MONA, his self-confessed Disneyland for adults, is a dystopian playground that dares explore the most primitive reaches of the collective imagination. It is the world’s largest publically accessible private art collection and Tasmanians get in for free.
Why?
Because David grew up here and he knows those in the surrounding low socio-economic streets won’t come otherwise. MONA was never about the money, which is lucky because it doesn’t make any. MONA is about subversive entertainment and hedonistic overindulgence. MONA is about challenging perceptions and dividing opinions. It’s about sexuality and religion and humanity and war. It’s about pushing, pushing, pushing boundaries until they’re so far behind you, you can’t even remember the point you stepped off and into the labyrinthine void.
It is possible to argue it’s not even about the art. It’s about the conversations the art triggers.
Is a room full of television screens broadcasting random strangers singing Madonna’s Immaculate Collection ‘art’? Let the door close softly behind you as you enter, grab a bean-bag and a position on the floor, and try not to lose whole portions of your day in mesmerised wonderment and then get back to me.
The modern, illegal, explicitly sexual, vulgar, violent and just plain old weird sit juxtaposed and judgment free alongside ancient Egyptian sarcophagi dating back centuries, and dynastic antiquities full of historical significance.
“This is ‘art’?”
Locals aren’t unfamiliar with the question: there’s a giant dinosaur turd shaped 'sculpture' on the banks of the highway not five minutes from MONA after-all. But it’s only now they’ve been moved to answer it.
Or try to.
Sidney Nolan’s Snake, all 1620 individually painted pieces of it, is “definitely art”. The installation depicting Dr Phillip Nitschke’s Suicide Machine, complete with couch to sit on and invitation to simulate your own chosen death, perhaps the ultimate act of human control, “definitely isn’t”.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter.
MONA is not about telling its visitors what to think. MONA is impetus, MONA is invitation. It is not an answer.
Literally.
Because nothing is labelled.
When you enter, you’re given an iPod that uses GPS to track your path through the maze of rooms and floors and open spaces. If you choose to, you can click on various links that will provide details of the individual pieces; artist, era, geographical location, title. Further clicking and you might get a rationale. Maybe. Probably not though.
For the cautious, or for those with children, a dedicated map provides a route that ensures you steer clear of C-nts and Other Conversations, 150 plaster-casts of female genitalia, and instead visit Chen Zhen’s trampoline rigged to a collection of meditation bells. Jump on it and make music.
Alternatively, grab a glass of Muse pinot grigio, or a Moo Brew beer marketed as “not for bogans”, both hand-crafted on-site, and while you’re waiting in line to have your heart-rate recorded by an illegal, pulsing light bulb imported all the way from China, ask the guy behind you or the seven year old in front of you;
“Is this art?”
And then listen as they give you their answer.
*
previously on...
introduction | jayus | the missing stair | in another castle | nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent | build a better mouse-trap | step on a crack, break your mother's back | yes, and... | the recency effect | barrel of monkeys | open topic | confession from the chair | chekhov's gun | a terrible beauty has been born