Port Out - Starboard Home.

We had heard many opinions of Mona and its collection - much of it negative.

Yes, some of it is “adults only” and would be confronting for some.

Consensus of opinion in our group of four was unanimously good. It does need to be seen to be explained - it is difficult to describe the collection.

I'm cheating. I'm using other peoples' words:-

“The MONA building is a work of art in itself. The gallery space is encased in a three-level subterranean "cave" cut into 240-million-year-old Triassic-era sandstone on the Derwent riverbank. A mind-warping spiral staircase winds down 17 metres to the bottom to recycled jarrah floorboards from an old woolshed, polished by years of lanolin contact. It is not just the art that is engulfing.
Bit.fall, by German artist Julius Popp, is a two-story pulsing waterfall of 128 computer-controlled nozzles that briefly drip a display of words streamed from real-time Google searches. "Abbott" appears briefly and tumbles to the ground with a splash like a discarded budgie smuggler. As do disaster, walk, cost, earned, course, hill, mission…
The installations are all over the place, literally and taxonomically. Antiquities such as a 1500-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus stand alongside modern art in an up-yours to the art establishment. And there are plenty of up-yours, or his, or hers, or its, to see.
Last year Lonely Planet named MONA the best modern art gallery in the world. Eye of the beholder stuff, of course. MONA is not for everyone, especially the squeamish, prudish, pious or morally or politically conservative. Or the snooty classicist. Shock value is more highly prized here than any actual mainstream art prize would be but MONA is a vibrant, eclectic phenomenon and a national treasure.”

Wikipedia says:-

“The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere.[2] MONA houses ancient, modern and contemporary art from the David Walsh collection. Noted for its central themes of sex and death, the museum has been described by Walsh as a "subversive adult Disneyland"
The artworks on display are in non-chronological order and without museum labels. Instead, visitors are given the option of using free headphones and an iPod-like device called the 'O', which has an in-built GPS that senses where its holder is located and displays information about artworks nearby. Users of the O can select different interpretations of any given piece: 'Summary' (a brief description of the work and its artist); 'Art Wank' (curator's notes); 'Gonzo' (Walsh's personal opinions and stories), 'Ideas' (quotes and talking points); and 'Media' (oftentimes interviews with artists). Walsh also commissioned Damian Cowell, frontman of satirical Melbourne band TISM, to write and record songs about certain works for the O device. They were released as a free album, Vs Art, with MONA's 2010 book Monanisms.
Michael Connor of the conservative literary and cultural magazine Quadrant said that "MONA is the art of the exhausted, of a decaying civilisation. Display lights and taste and stunning effects illuminate moral bankruptcy. What is highlighted melds perfectly with contemporary high fashion, design, architecture, cinema. It is expensive and tense decay."[19]
Richard Dorment, art critic for the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, said that Walsh "doesn't collect famous names; his indifference to fashion is one of the strengths of the collection. He likes art that is fun and grabs your attention, that packs a sting in the tail or a punch in the solar plexus."

NB -The O is now an app that is downloaded to mobile phones or iPads etc.Read more