Underground in Tassie...

Before I get started on what I'm up to - one cool thing - I'll be counted in the Australian census! Because I was in an Australian household the night of August 9, 2011, I count. In 99 years, when the records are released, my great great grandchildren will be able to easily see that on that night I was in Sydney! The census here is FAR more intensive than the last one in the States... It includes page after page of questioning about everything. Our last one in the US was like 3 questions, and ours is every ten years! (theirs is every five - the Aussies must be better record keepers than we are...)

Any who... I'm in TASMANIA!!! I arrived this morning. I wanted to go somewhere a bit different and right up through my trip in Asia was really debating where to go. I thought about Kakadu (in the northern territories), Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock), Perth (the main city in the West), and Hobart (capital of Tasmania). Ultimately my choice came down to Tassie because it's off season and thus was much cheaper (off season, I'm finding, if you can handle somewhat less desirable weather, is not a bad time to see a place).

As soon as I arrived in Sydney and telling people my not all that well thought out plans, I kept hearing about this new museum I just HAD to check out. Enter MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). I did a little bit of research and decided that, yes, Hobart was a must this trip.

A little history - Millionaire (or maybe billionaire) Tasman, David Walsh, had this museum built of his own personal collection (and many pieces he had commissioned). His wealth comes from a gambling scheme and I'm somewhat unclear from there. He had another museum on the location at the start of the 2000s but reworked it and spent the last four years building up something that could easily put Hobart on the map (at least in the art world). He has very out there taste. He ended up building the museum downwards floors below the original site (which has been redone and is where you enter) and is pretty much carved out of the limestone rock that lay below the structure.

I usually like museums and can be very patient, but today I had a whoever new experience. For six straight hours I did nothing but look at artwork and tour the museum - and at the end I felt hurried. The museum feels huge and a bit maze like. Walsh did not just want to be confined to modern or ancient art so it's all there. And it's all together. Seriously. There will be a fantasy like world that you out your head into and enter a world of dreams where your face is planted into a gelt body and with a computer mouse you get to choose different paths, places right next to an ancient mummy. There also is no explanation on the walls, artwork, podium, etc. Instead, upon entry, everyone is given an iPod touch and a headset (this, along with admission, is free). What you do is click the "o" button wherever you are and it will update with a list of works you are near and a little picture. You identify which one you would like to hear about, click on it and have a varying amount of information at your fingertips (always information on the artist and the title of the piece, usually much, much more.)

The best way to get to the museum is by ferry - about 30 minutes up the Derwent River. Though it is winter here, the beauty of this island state of Australia is pretty evident.



Me on the ferry just before heading up to the museum.



Probably my favorite piece. Or at least the one I just couldn't get enough of. Words would fall in water from top to bottom. I don't know how many but a seemingly endless supply. They would be there one second and gone before you could blink. Behind it is the limestone that made up most of the walls.



This took me back to my Kidspace (a museum for kids in Pasadena) days. You put your body up against the wall and hit that white button you see on the right. It scans you like a photocopier and the cycles through all the images from that day. The parts of you that touched the screen are sharpest and it gets fuzzier from there. I did one but I like this one better.



Then all the sudden I found myself alone and in this weird tunnel. At the end was the library and some fun pieces. One of my favorites "on the other side" was The Jungle Book movie - full length. Each character was assigned a different language and there was a Sierra of sketches as to which was which on the wall next to the tv. Nineteen languages were represented. I immediately thought back to my Hebrew school days - TOWER OF BABLE! I was pretty stoked when reading about it on the iPod that that was David Walsh's take as well.

OHHH! And the coolest thing about that iPod system- it kept track of everything I looked at and my email address. In the next 24-48 hrs I should be sent an email where I will be able to go back through everything I saw and read more in depth if I'd like. Welcome to art in the 21st century folks!



Some parts of the exhibit are very hands on. Here I am holding up my personal contribution to one of the pieces. One of the artists had collected ten or so stones from the Hiroshima railroad that was destroyed after the bomb was dropped. Using charcoal, he has scratched hundreds of pieces of paper. They are on display, and now visitors of the museum are to don the same. They are to be preserved in drawers and I think the idea is that some day the museum will do something with them.



This piece is called Cloaca. To me, it seems it belongs more in a science museum than in an art museum, but I guess that proves just how eclectic David Walsh must be. What this device does is mimic the human digestive system. Twice a day (11am and 4pm), the machine is fed a normal meal (on the stain glass table to the left you see a bowl - that's the mouth. The feeding I witnessed (dinner) consisted of a pork sandwich, a glass of white wine, a brownie, and plenty of water. At 2pm very day, Cloaca defecates (the end where this happens is just to the right. It smells and looks like the real stuff... SO bizarre. Apparently this system, like many human digestive systems, does poorly with spicy food.



This whole room was one installation - the wordless white library. I'll butcher the commentary, but it was basically about how important a book is, even if it isn't read.



This bloated porsche was a commentary (I think) on our overly glutinous society. There was another very different one that seemed to point to the same thing where you walked into a room and your silhouette was black in front of a white screen. The second you started to move things - objects, mechanical things, anything- started to attach to you until your silhouette was no longer remarkably recognizable, it was just a moving blob of clutter.

I'm really not sure that this is the best museum in the world, although it certainly held me completely captive for HOURS, but it is definitely worth a look and I'm so glad I got to see it. I kind of wish that the "old" wasn't a part of it. The mummies and coins, etc spoke to me a lot less, but there was a quote in there that said something to the effect of, to only collect the modern is just trendy - I think this is why there was so much else. It struck me as odd, however, that it was MOSTLY modern (1950s - today) and then probably 25% ancient (pre 1200ad, but mainly, BC works). There was almost nothing between those dates, and that didn't totally make sense to me. It was literally OLD OLD and new.

Very cool day. Very cool exhibit. Very happy to have made the trek to wintery Hobart!

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