DAY 24 - January 2, 2023 - Hobart's MONA

A couple of days before, we had made reservations to visit the MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) for 10:00am and for the Cellar Wine Tasting (inside the MONA) at 12:30pm.

We woke up to a hot day and it remained quite hot until the end of the afternoon when the weather turned stormy, windy, and chilly… as Alex and Jess say, it’s Tasmania’s weather. Hot one minute, cold the next.

The MONA is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery and is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses ancient, modern and contemporary art from the David Walsh collection. David Walsh is a professional gambler, art collector, and businessman. He made his fortune by developing a gambling system used to bet on horse racing and other sports.

The MONA tunnels

The museum is a dimly lit, subterranean sandstone labyrinth, dealing with a broad array of themes, death, sex, the human being, pretentious art, and other controversial topics. Another trait of the MONA is there are no wall labels. Instead, there is a downloadable app (called the O) that we used to understand the various work being displayed.

Siloam is MONA’s new tunnel extension. “It is born, like the rest of MONA, of iteration: a combination of ‘where have we been’ and ‘where will we go next…”

Since we had one hour before our wine tasting, we took a first look inside the museum. At first glance, you can see why the MONA is very unique – and controversial – and very much unlike any other museum I’ve ever seen. I really like the vibes of the museum.

Our wine tasting session was very pleasant. The wines were quite nice, a bit “immature,” but with a very pleasant aroma. We enjoyed the break to taste the wines and chill.

The wine tasting opened up our appetite! We chose Dubsy’s, the most popular restaurant in the center yard of the museum. Dubsy’s is a “fire-cooked flame-grilled lawn food: plenty of veggies, wholesome grains, and invasive species-meats.” The yard was crowded and – and hot! Luckily, we did find a couple of benches under the awnings. The food was delicious!

In the yard, there is a sculpture called Compelling Contradictions (below photo on the left) which was made by the same artist, Thomas Otterness, who also created the Playground sculpture (below photo on the right) that is located in Manhattan on W. 41st Street between 11th & 12th Avenues.

These two exhibits were really fascinating. Its creator, Tomás Saraceno, draws his inspiration from science, nature, architecture, local communities, design, engineering, environmentalism, anthropology, music, history, and technology. His art goes from the miniscule to the vast, with a kaleidoscopic array of materials such as spider webs, radiation balloons, fine particle pollution from the skies of Mumbai, air samples from across Australia, dust from our museum, radio frequencies generated by meteoroids. We all enjoyed his work. Very interesting and unique.

Below is a photo gallery of the Spider Webs Exhibit

Below is the photo gallery of the Oceans of Air Exhibit

Although it was very hot, we decided to step outside to visit the House of Mirrors. These are always fun… we did find our way out!

“Supersymmetry is an artistic vision of the reality of nature through an immersive and sensory experience. It is a series of work conceived as installation versions of the performance work “superposition” and as a platform to update the process and outcome of a residency during 2014-15 at CERN in Geneva, the largest center in the world for particle physics. The exhibit includes 40 DLP projectors, 41 computers, and loud speakers. The exhibit includes 40 DLP projectors, 41 computers, and loud speakers.”

The concept and composition are created by Ryoji Ikeda in collaboration with:

Programming, computer graphics: Norimichi Hirakawa
Programming, computer graphics, computer system design, technical management: Tomonaga Tokuyama
Programming, computer graphics: Yoshito Onishi

When we texted Andy about what we were seeing, he was very envious. Of course, he had heard about this creation; it’s right up his alley. Jess sent him a few photos. I also put together a short video (see below) of the various iterations of the exhibit… quite captivating.

Due to the popularity of the Egyptian Tomb exhibit and the fact that they only allow two people at a time in the “tomb”, we had made viewing reservations for 3:30pm. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate information on this exhibit… all we have is pictures. What you cannot see very well on the pictures we took is that the tomb is surrounded with water. To get to the tomb, you have to walk on narrow wooden planks to get to the tomb itself… all part of the experience.

Below are two photo galleries of various artwork displayed at the MONA that we all found very interesting. I wouldn’t mind some of the paintings in my big mansion !

The Grotto (below photo on the left) is a sparkling cavern inside a stone tunnel. “There, blown-glass flowers and polished aluminum reflect small low-resolution videos of catastrophic weather and geological events. In an environment where time becomes immaterial, a 36-channel lighting composition traces patterns and movement to stimulate neural pathways.” Truly an immersive experience.

The below photo on the right is the 20:50 exhibit. “The 20:50 is an art installation by Richard Wilson that was created in 1987 and first exhibited in London, and after a world tour was permanently installed at MONA. 20:50 is built out of sump oil and steel. The oil fills the whole room with one narrow viewing path that goes straight into the center. The oil is about waist deep but you cannot tell the depth from looking at the surface. From above, it’s an optical illusion. It looks like another level to the building, but really, it’s the reflection of the ceiling above you.”

Before leaving the Mona, we took the time to capture some photos outside. It had suddenly become very windy and we could see storm clouds moving in. We didn’t get rained on but we felt some raindrops.

The sign on the road is a good example of Mona’s eccentricity. “Please help Moorilla stay disease-free by keeping your dirty human bodies out of our vineyard. You humans are really filthy.”

The above photos are taken at MONA’s front entrance. From there, you can see the Derwent River and parts of Hobart.

The bottom line: I definitely want to go back to MONA one day. Now that I better understand the concept of the museum and the various sections to explore, it will even more fun to discover its very unique artwork and exhibits.

We ended a great day with a great dinner at St Albi Restaurant – a really nice treat from Jess and Alex – within walking distance of the house. We celebrated our vacation and holidays together and our future plans.