Thursday, February 28, 2013

our tom cruise to tasmania (part two)

The Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania is interesting and fun and weird and shocking and unexpected and irreverent and special and very much like the HBO show "Girls."  You don't think you want to see Lena Dunham in a see-thru yellow mesh top with no bra on but then you do and there's something appealing about it all.  Her.  The show.  Even that top.

MONA's just like that.

Located in Hobart, MONA is Australia's largest private museum owned by David Walsh.  His bio says that his mother named him Glen at birth but then found God and changed his name to David.  He has a dog named Bruce and a cat named Christ.  And he is, he says, a prick. Glen/David came up with some sort of mathematical gambling equation that he applied to poker and ponies and made millions.  With this money and that backstory and no allegiance to God, he built a museum.

It is free for locals and $20 for me.

But.  Beware, socially conservative toddlers.  It's not for everyone or children or my dad, as it does dabble in the disgusting and inappropriate, but it is so incredibly amazing and not many things are these days.

Lena Dunham should definitely put a bra on and go.

http://www.mona.net.au/

You can take a bus or ferry there.
Take the ferry.   

The three-level, cliff-face museum, carved out of the very sandstone it sits in, starts here.


An artist buying stories on the street for a dollar bought this one.

A dark room with one light.
And the blurry, hard-to-articulate/impossible-to-photograph, mesmerizing aura that surrounded it.


This is a scalp.  And that is a bullet hole. 


I loved this painting.


Of tiny little things that I couldn't or wouldn't stop looking at.


Choreographed rain.


Erect bubbles in rubbish bins that moved when you blew on them but just stood there when you didn't.


The human digestion system in machine form.
Food scraps go in, number twos come out.

A socioeconomic statement with backs.


The ones that I thought were the happy rich backs were actually the sad poor ones.


God's mistress drives a really nice car.


The entrance and tennis court and view.



One of the cottages on the grounds you can rent if your name is Brett.
It comes with a peacock, Brett.



Go.

8 comments:

  1. I would like to park in "God's Mistress" parking space.

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  2. I love this post and the art. You're so right--somehow the yellow mesh top was good. And I love your enthusiasm for this art, and I love the name of the museum and the story about its founder. Thank you for this, Crew!

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  3. Thanks, my darling. Nice to start the day with some aaaah-rt. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

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  4. I'll meet you there this weekend.

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