January 21st 2012

15 notes |#

The shock of MONA

What is the most shocking thing about Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art?

David Walsh’s extraordinary new museum has received its fair share of media coverage since being opened a year ago. This often focused on its cost ($75 million of Walsh’s own money) or the ‘scandalous’ nature of some exhibits, such as Greg Taylor’s Cunts: A Conversation pictured above (controversy which the museum seems to delight in). More eruditely, there has been furious debate about whether the collection is simply a rich man’s Cabinet of Curiosities or whether it truly ‘helps us to lead better lives’ (the quaint, almost Stalinist view of the civic function of art argued by philosopher, John Armstrong in Island magazine).

MONA is an exhilarating place to visit. There are any number of reasons for this. The dramatic buildings and site. The eclectic, unblinking nature of the opening exhibition on sex and death: ‘Monanism’. The fact that one can freely take photographs. The irreverent comments by Walsh himself about some of the exhibits. And not forgetting the bar in the basement …

But what shocked me most was the difference made by the absence of any labels or directions whatsoever about how to view the exhibits. Our initial encounter with each artwork is totally unmediated by contextual ‘noise’. Not even the barest detail.

In other galleries, we can ignore the patronising ‘explications’ often displayed next to art works, but cannot help checking the title, the artist, the date. Yet even these interfere with our experience of the work, filtering what the eye sees through everything we may happen to know know about Rothko, about the development of perspective drawing, or Caravaggio’s tempestuous life.

Is that painted carven head from an Egyptian tomb? An anatomical model from the Renaissance? Or a new piece by Damien Hirst? Even the artist’s name or a date mediates how we perceive a work, instead of leaving the individual’s eye to see and sensibility to react.

All you could want to know about any work at MONA is on hand by checking the iPod guide, but this becomes a secondary and optional act to seeing itself. This naked, exhilarating encounter with the artworks at MONA is the museum’s most shocking revelation for the visitor - one which which will long outlast any philistine outrage over the poignant line of pudenda in Taylor’s ‘conversation piece.’

Posted at 11:36pm and tagged with: Art, David Walsh, Death, Hobart, MONA, Sex, full width, Leica, Digilux 2,.

The shock of MONA What is the most shocking thing about Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art? David Walsh’s extraordinary new museum has received its fair share of media coverage since being opened a year ago. This often focused on its cost ($75 million of Walsh’s own money) or the ‘scandalous’ nature of some exhibits, such as Greg Taylor’s Cunts: A Conversation pictured above (controversy which the museum seems to delight in). More eruditely, there has been furious debate about whether the collection is simply a rich man’s Cabinet of Curiosities or whether it truly ‘helps us to lead better lives’ (the quaint, almost Stalinist view of the civic function of art argued by philosopher, John Armstrong in Island magazine). MONA is an exhilarating place to visit. There are any number of reasons for this. The dramatic buildings and site. The eclectic, unblinking nature of the opening exhibition on sex and death: ‘Monanism’. The fact that one can freely take photographs. The irreverent comments by Walsh himself about some of the exhibits. And not forgetting the bar in the basement … But what shocked me most was the difference made by the absence of any labels or directions whatsoever about how to view the exhibits. Our initial encounter with each artwork is totally unmediated by contextual ‘noise’. Not even the barest detail. In other galleries, we can ignore the patronising ‘explications’ often displayed next to art works, but cannot help checking the title, the artist, the date. Yet even these interfere with our experience of the work, filtering what the eye sees through everything we may happen to know know about Rothko, about the development of perspective drawing, or Caravaggio’s tempestuous life. Is that painted carven head from an Egyptian tomb? An anatomical model from the Renaissance? Or a new piece by Damien Hirst? Even the artist’s name or a date mediates how we perceive a work, instead of leaving the individual’s eye to see and sensibility to react. All you could want to know about any work at MONA is on hand by checking the iPod guide, but this becomes a secondary and optional act to seeing itself. This naked, exhilarating encounter with the artworks at MONA is the museum’s most shocking revelation for the visitor - one which which will long outlast any philistine outrage over the poignant line of pudenda in Taylor’s ‘conversation piece.’

September 30th 2011

|#

REVIEW: AFTER ROMULUS

The business of growing up starts with distancing ourselves from our parents. It ends (as far as it ever ends) with drawing them close again. Instead of disappointing giants, we recognise them at last as fallible, unique humans beings. We recognise them in ourselves, and so they become real to us …

In the October issue of the Australian Book Review, I write about Raimond Gaita’s new collection of essays, After Romulus, which tackles what he calls the ‘unfinished business’ left after the success of his memoir, Romulus, My Father, and the subsequent film version.

The always-fascinating transition of book to movie is discussed by Gaita, along with his continuing relatonship with his mother and father. ‘Biographies often continue after the person whose life is narrated has died,’ writes Gaita  - identifying our attitudes to our parents as markers of our own evolving maturity.

For details of After Romulus and to read the review, see the October 2011 issue or subscribe at ABR.

Posted at 9:54am and tagged with: full width, Raimond Gaita, Romulus My Father, ABR,.

REVIEW: AFTER ROMULUS The business of growing up starts with distancing ourselves from our parents. It ends (as far as it ever ends) with drawing them close again. Instead of disappointing giants, we recognise them at last as fallible, unique humans beings. We recognise them in ourselves, and so they become real to us … In the October issue of the Australian Book Review, I write about Raimond Gaita’s new collection of essays, After Romulus, which tackles what he calls the ‘unfinished business’ left after the success of his memoir, Romulus, My Father, and the subsequent film version. The always-fascinating transition of book to movie is discussed by Gaita, along with his continuing relatonship with his mother and father. ‘Biographies often continue after the person whose life is narrated has died,’ writes Gaita  - identifying our attitudes to our parents as markers of our own evolving maturity. For details of After Romulus and to read the review, see the October 2011 issue or subscribe at ABR.

September 28th 2011

|#

My God, I love a thunderstorm!

Shoreham, Victoria, 28 September, 6.14 pm.

Posted at 6:18pm and tagged with: Shoreham, thunderstorm, full width,.

My God, I love a thunderstorm! Shoreham, Victoria, 28 September, 6.14 pm.

March 27th 2011

4 notes |#

The old man in the market

When I moved to Melbourne over 10 years ago, a regular sight at my local market was an old man quietly sitting at a card table with piles of books in front of him. No one took any notice. The crowd bustled past him and his books on ‘liberating the human spirit’ and ‘new consciousness.’ 

Eccentrics hawking self-published books are a familiar sight, but one day I asked who the man was. ‘Oh, that’s Jim Cairns,’ someone said. ‘He was Deputy Prime Minister under Whitlam, you know …’

One of the irritations of being a politician must be that after a lifetime’s work, you are often defined in the public imagination by a single incident (think Malcolm Fraser and the Memphis Trousers Affair). I’ve recently been reading Paul Ormonde’s biography of Cairns, A Foolish Passionate Man, and was struck at how true this of him, and how unfair it was.

Cairns is now remembered for the so-called Morosi Affair, when his political career came to an abrupt end following a friendship with a staffer, Juni Morosi, who was not only outspoken but glamorous, confident, female and ‘of mixed race’. These were multiple crimes against the status quo of 1970s Australia. When he began to speak publicly of society as ‘not just a market, but a community’, and announcing that real social change would not happen until we all learned to love one another, there was sniggering and rolling of eyes on all sides of politics. The knives came out.

In the aftermath, he was a prime mover in establishing the Down to Earth conference-festival (soon to be known as Confest) and spent the remainder of his life promoting ‘alternative’ views which would become more and more popular among young people, when he was already in his sixties and seventies. In a sense, Cairns’ tragedy was that he was a man before his time.

His role as de facto leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s, his part in bringing the White Australia policy to an end, in beginning the work of tariff-reduction while minimising the impact, and opening up relations with China … in all of this acted with a conviction and moral purpose which would shame most modern politicians.

________________

Image: © Rennie Ellis. Jim Cairns at Confest, Phillip Island 1980. 

Posted at 9:49pm and tagged with: full width, Jim Cairns, Juni Morosi,.

The old man in the market When I moved to Melbourne over 10 years ago, a regular sight at my local market was an old man quietly sitting at a card table with piles of books in front of him. No one took any notice. The crowd bustled past him and his books on ‘liberating the human spirit’ and ‘new consciousness.’  Eccentrics hawking self-published books are a familiar sight, but one day I asked who the man was. ‘Oh, that’s Jim Cairns,’ someone said. ‘He was Deputy Prime Minister under Whitlam, you know …’ One of the irritations of being a politician must be that after a lifetime’s work, you are often defined in the public imagination by a single incident (think Malcolm Fraser and the Memphis Trousers Affair). I’ve recently been reading Paul Ormonde’s biography of Cairns, A Foolish Passionate Man, and was struck at how true this of him, and how unfair it was. Cairns is now remembered for the so-called Morosi Affair, when his political career came to an abrupt end following a friendship with a staffer, Juni Morosi, who was not only outspoken but glamorous, confident, female and ‘of mixed race’. These were multiple crimes against the status quo of 1970s Australia. When he began to speak publicly of society as ‘not just a market, but a community’, and announcing that real social change would not happen until we all learned to love one another, there was sniggering and rolling of eyes on all sides of politics. The knives came out. In the aftermath, he was a prime mover in establishing the Down to Earth conference-festival (soon to be known as Confest) and spent the remainder of his life promoting ‘alternative’ views which would become more and more popular among young people, when he was already in his sixties and seventies. In a sense, Cairns’ tragedy was that he was a man before his time. His role as de facto leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s, his part in bringing the White Australia policy to an end, in beginning the work of tariff-reduction while minimising the impact, and opening up relations with China … in all of this acted with a conviction and moral purpose which would shame most modern politicians. ________________ Image: © Rennie Ellis. Jim Cairns at Confest, Phillip Island 1980.