about devils

This picture is for A, who like me, first heard about Tazmania as a child through the Looney Tunes cartoon character of Tazmanian Devil. If I knew where the country was, I think it was a while longer before I knew devils were real, and even longer to be sure how big they are (small dog) and what their actual rather than cartoon characteristics were. However, as with A, the devil is the first thing I think of when anybody mentions Tassie.

And now the devils are at risk, their numbers seriously depleted by devil facial tumour disease. Despite the sign I did not see one (perhaps because they are nocturnal) although I did see a wallaby –shaped thing, which could have been, I learn from the parks and wildlifeservice, a potoroo, pademelon or bettong.

following the pipeline

After a day underground, I had a fabulous 3hour walk from Fern Tree down the side of Mt. Wellington, all the way back to the waterfront. I had originally planned to take a tourist bus up to the summit, but was stymied by a huge group off a cruise liner, so got the local bus half-way up instead. Lucky really as I took what was called the easy bushwalk from Fern Tree - the pipeline track - since I was stupidly wearing flip-flops, and it still involved a steep and dangerously uneven incline at Gentle Annie’s Falls (ha, not gentle at all!).

The track follows the original construction of Hobart water supply from the 1860s and its various additions from stone to metal to concrete pipes; the sound of underground water follows you most of the way down to the waterworks reservoir; and the views are fantastic.

no labels but lots of logo

One of MONA’s deliberate anarchies is to not label the work. Instead if you want you can hook up with iPods and/or headphones (the O guide) and learn about the art as you go; from a series of different voices, including Walsh’s own reasons for buying a piece. However, the project is supported by a large amount of written material – Monanisms, the catalogue for the opening show; the Making of MONA about the whole project; and David Walsh’s memoir A Bone of Fact. We may not be given ‘proper’ art-gallery-type instructions about how to read the art (who made it, when, what out of, where and in what context) but there is a tremendous amount of post-modern, post-everything ‘stuff’ which surrounds the collection, infused by all the irony, partiality, cleverness, and witty asides one has come to expect. How long this will seem ‘on-trend’ rather than deeply dated waits to be seen.

shocking?

The collected work at MONA focuses on the visceral, the ritualistic and the mythological (with some post-modern ‘Disneyland’ thrown in); picking up a rich thread in modern and contemporary art and tying it back to ancient Egyptian artifacts and the like. We are meant to be shocked – by the building’s unexpectedness, by the lack of labels on the work, by the refusal of ‘artwank’ and by the work itself. 

It is, of course, an artificial controversy (one that Walsh himself only seems often bored by). We have already had, after all ‘ the shock of the new’ of modern art, and it is nearly 20 years since Saatchi’s Sensation show spotlighting the supposedly notorious Young British Artists (the YBAs) and their enthusiasm for the distasteful and bloody.

Walsh’s collection, though, brings that attitude decidedly into the 21^st century and into the act of collecting and displaying work itself. The current guest exhibition is Matthew Burney’s Riverof Fundament, which seems a perfect fit. Other large permanent pieces such as Anselm Kiefer’s Sherivath ha Kelim, give some organizational structure to the space. This has it’s own pavilion (entered via a long dark and musical concrete pipe, which suddenly spits you out into really unexpected daylight).  It is also a ‘classic’ marker of the kind of work on show. For, despite all the hype, the work on show is both an incredibly coherent selection - whether you like it or not- of where much contemporary art has been going.

holidaying in Hobart

Have just had an amazing couple of days in Hobart; one to visit the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) – a kind of hugely impressive vanity project by the professional gambler and art collector David Walsh – and the other to climb up (well actually down) Mount Wellington.

MONA is all the critics say. You reach it best by boat up the river Derwent to Berridale (the Mona Roma, done up in dazzle camouflage, and with plastic sheep to sit on) then up a long flight of steps to what appears as a small single storey pavilion – a converted existing house on the site – with a tennis court literally in front of the entrance, plus cafes, pavilions, a stage and rolling lawns between.

Then through a mirrored front door and back down and down via a spiral stair cut directly through the sandstone into what feels like a huge subterranean gallery, dark and windowless. A second Piranesi-like staircase made of corten at the other end meanders back up through the levels, in and against a deep cut of exposed and often wet sandstone, that slices a linear void through length of the space.  The project, by architects Fender Katsalidis, is quite stunning and unlike most of what we know of galleries; or at least conventional airy white box versions. Of course, the space signals what the collector/collection is about – an odd mixture of incredible sophistication and naughty boy. Which I enjoyed enormously, even the obvious bits, because it still manages to feel refreshing.

and then 2015...

Watched the famous Sydney Bridge fireworks on Shark Island, from a fabulous picnic spot with a full-on view (with thanks to R's fleetness of foot, literally running from the ferry to find a space), but as usual took lousy fireworks shots. If you would like to see the full shebang, click here...