MONA - WHERE ART AND LIFE COLLIDE

I turned 50 a few days back.  It was a big birthday.  For months I had been preparing.  Cleaning out my studio. Cleaning out my life.  Getting ready for the second half of the journey.  As my celebration I decided to visit MONA in Hobart. We stayed in a Pavilion and booked a 5 course degustation menu for the celebratory dinner.  An absolute treat.

 

We arrived by ferry on the morning of my birthday.  My dear friend Cate and her husband Philip came with Rob and I. As the birthday girl I received a glass of champagne on the boat.

We had a coffee and croissant and then took the journey into another universe. The museum is built into a cliff and you can walk or take a lift down into the bowels of the earth. 

The Red Queen exhibition was showing.

 

The first thing I see is an installation of light globes where you can hold a sensor that registers your heart beat and the light displays the rhythm of your heart.  I have had two coffees, a champagne and I am excited about being 50 and in MONA.  My heart is beating fast.

 I walk past two table tennis tables.  One has grooves cut into it and makes a game of table tennis virtually futile.  The ball gets caught in the grooves or bounces off at crazy angles.  Cate and I play and enjoy the hilarity of this encounter.  People say we are glad you tried this as we wanted to see what happened. I note that some people do not engage despite a tempting invitation to take up a table tennis bat. Some people observe while others experience.

 We continue and I walk through a corridor of red velvet curtains to enter a gallery of confronting artworks.  Transgender people, human pain and suffering, death, sex and gunshot wounds confront me.

 I am taking photos and listening to the commentaries. I sit down on a comfortable, lived in couch to discover I am in front of Philip Nietsche's euthanasia machine.  I feel sick as I give my approval via a laptop to be injected with a lethal injection. I experience what it must be like to make that decision.  The program tells me when the chemical enters my brain, when I will be unconscious, when my breathing stops and tells me I am dead.  Confronting art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I continue to immerse myself in art that is disturbing to say the least. I feel normal here as my art often disturbs.  I am loving this space of creativity and social commentary. I continue on and find an interesting installation. The viewer is invited to pull out drawers on a wall.  Each drawer says "I love you" in a different voice.  Children, lovers, men, women with different voices and auditory tones change the emphasis and intonation on those three simple words.  I get overexcited and pull out 12 drawers and there is a cacophony of people all telling me they love me.  A narcissist's dream. I laugh and show my friend Cate.  Cate is a serious art person and is often subdued in a gallery.  I take a short film of her opening the drawers taking note of her reactions.  She is curious and smiles.  She engages with this art object. She is having fun.

Suddenly I realise that MONA focuses on giving the audience an experience through sensory engagement. While there is an adequate supply of two dimensional art, there is an abundance of three dimensional sculpture and installations.  The viewer is invited to touch.  The touch seems to invite play - even with death.

It is a gallery that appeals to our senses.  Sight, touch, sound and smell (particularly the installation called Cloaca that mimics our digestive system and creates shit.  The exhibit stinks and people do not linger here I notice).

Taste is missing however in this gallery.  Mind you there is an abundance of cafes, restaurants, bars so that you can sit in amongst art and taste gorgeous things (macarons, Vietnamese salads, coffee, alcohol are some of the things I sample). I think to myself wouldn't it be fascinating to create an art object that could be eaten.  I imagine it won't be long before someone tries it.  I wonder if the curators have thought about this sensory experience for the visitors.  Have they chosen art that deliberately engages the audience with different senses. That would be interesting to find out.

I jot down the phrase, "Reality and art are blurred here.  Life and art interact and it is hard to know where one ends and the other begins.' I ponder the wonders around me.

My phone starts to vibrate and I am jolted from the depths of my thoughts.  It is time to check in to the Walter Pavilion (as in Walter Burley Griffin the architect) and I take the lift back to the surface and consciousness....oh hell I have just turned 50.