MOCO, Paradox and the Art of Travel

With a clean suitcase ready to go tomorrow, I met up with Peta again this evening to, you guessed it, check out some more galleries. I love how everything is open late here — it allows for some downtime without the FOMO feeling of needing to get everything done by 5 p.m. Even though the first gallery was walkable, I took the metro to save a couple of minutes and avoid the heat. While the heat shouldn't bother me as an Australian, it did today. The humidity was high, I was sweating, and just feeling tired. Peta prescribed a sorbet for the heat — good suggestion. Lemon sorbet is so refreshing. The coolness and the sugar hit — what's not to love?

I arrived a little early so wandered through some nearby shops. I seemed to be in the pottery district, with several cute stores selling expensive clay goods. Later in the day we passed some mini pottery studios, where you could watch the artist at work while browsing their store. One guy was making some pinch pot mugs that I saw on sale for €35 — quite the price for a single mug. I even spotted a “dickramics” piece going for €75. Maybe I should start making those and selling them to the European market.

Inside MOCO — which I thought stood for Museum of Contemporary Art, though the acronym doesn’t really work — it was all very modern. Think bright colours, political statements, optical illusions with mirrors, and immersive digital displays. They even had a section on NFTs, which I still don’t understand. Is it owning art but only in a digital form, or is it more about owning the concept of the art?

The more modern gallery drew a younger crowd, so I didn’t feel out of place taking selfies and videos — unlike at the Picasso Museum yesterday where I felt a bit self-conscious. Some of the works surprised me, like a series by Robbie Williams — I didn’t even know he made art. They were colourful, political, and oddly relatable. I even bought something from his collection in the gift shop. There was also a piece by Yayoi Kusama, though unusually in black and white. It took me back to the much more colourful, polka-dot-filled Kusama exhibition I saw in Melbourne earlier this year — full of joy and colour, so this one felt a little out of character.

Navigating between rooms required stepping outside briefly, which made me appreciate just how blissfully well air-conditioned the gallery was — a smart way to spend a hot afternoon. Souvenirs bought (without spending enough to get my €5 off), we wandered to our next stop, admiring the architecture of some buildings along the way. It was still hot, so we took a quick breather in a very well air-conditioned art store, sitting and looking at art once again — with no intention of buying a piece. The shopkeeper really should have set up their workspace at the back of the store where the A/C was strongest.

To round out the gallery visits, we headed to the Paradox Museum. The online photos made it look fun and interactive, so I figured why not. We timed our arrival well and basically had the place to ourselves for most of the visit. It was a very hands-on and selfie-encouraging museum dedicated to illusions that mess with your mind. Think optical illusions or sensory tricks — starting off with a nausea-inducing walk through a spinning hall that made me feel like I was drunk… complete with the urge to spew afterwards.

It reminded me of Scienceworks or Questacon back in Australia — learning how things work by experiencing the illusion or controlling it. We took on zero gravity, cloned ourselves and challenged the clones to a card game, flew through a portal, and blended into the background. I’m a big kid at heart, so it was fun — though by the end, we’d had enough and skipped a few selfie ops.

Galleried out for the evening, we stopped by a burger joint on the way home for some dinner. I struggled to decide between a burger or chicken and waffles — a meal I’m still mourning after my favourite café in Thornbury that used to serve it shut down six years ago. I’m not over it yet, and I decided against trying the Barcelona version since I knew I’d be too judgy. Skipping drinks tonight, we wandered back to the hotel via the Arc de Triomf — Barcelona edition — then called it an early night.Read more