Terra Tasmania: Many curious things to shew

MONA is the construct of Hobart millionaire, David Walsh, who has made the many millions needed to build it by devising gambling systems to win on horses and in casinos, so he is an adept entrepreneur and his gallery carries an air of inherent risk about it.

It displays his collection of old and new stuff, stuff that is valued as art, and stuff that is there solely because he bought and paid for it, and he can, and does, include whatever he chooses in his own gallery. Even his father's ashes are there.

He is reported as saying he doesn't care two figs if people like, or do not like, his collection or his gallery. And that attitude pretty much rubs off and permeates the place, and the staff.

The expensive building is not all beautiful, nor is it an architectural masterpiece. It is built more as a house, albeit a very large house, facing the waterfront, backing the Moorilla vineyards which he also owns. So, if the museum idea ever fails he will likely still have a place to live, with a very nice cellar to drown his sorrows. Queues to enter the gallery form on the family tennis court on an upper level, albeit this is a fairly dysfunctional idea as it can't really be played on during the day when paying customers are about, and, at night, any ball hit hard on its artificial surface must surely loft over the rusty balustrade, and land right in the river Derwent.

The exposed bits of the exterior lean toward a rusted metal look, which works quite well in Australia and is as much at home on a waterfront as it is in our iconic outback museums where earth and rust seem organic, seem to merge.

MONA is carved deep down into the cliff. The building descends into cavernous and ruggedly cut sandstone spaces, all very inward-looking, and the further you descend, the darker the light, the more stygian and gloomier the outlook. And the more depressing the world view of many of the pieces, and the artists, currently on display.

Many of the pieces are from creators whose thoughts revolve around excrement, which then colours their creative juices. Just occasionally there is an odd piece that infuses light and colour, that floats up from a different view of the world. Coming across one of these is like coming across a seat in the museum, and just as rare and precious, little isolated patches of hope and light. Too few, overall, though.

Somewhere in the building David Walsh has an apartment where he and his guests are able to view the visitors who are viewing his collection. As if they, too, are part of the collection.

“Will you walk into my parlour?" said a spider to a fly;

“Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.

The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,

And I have many pretty things to shew when you are there.”

And lo and behold! that is virtually the first thing most people read in the material as they enter the museum. Knowing that you are being viewed like an object in a zoo by the collector adds another layer of disconcerting to the entire viewing experience.

And though David Walsh doesn't care about visitor's reactions they are minutely recorded. At reception, each visitor receives an iPod as a location and orientation tool, rich with information on each piece of work. Wonderful, these. All museums should have them. Your trip personal tour can be sequentially mapped, even down to measuring how long you spend in front of each item. This you can then save through MONA's website to review and access at a later date if you so wish.

So, too, can gallery personnel if they ever need a big brother perspective to monitor their decisions about inclusion, layout, or interest-generating data. These bits seem to run well and provide useful bytes of marketing data for those running the show.

But not all of MONA is yet running smoothly. The day we arrived the lights wouldn't function in the building, so the hoards had to queue in the heat for a good portion of the morning before that was somewhat righted. What was interesting to watch were the staff, wandering around hugging their phones helplessly, with no one seemingly able to come forward with any sensible options to appease the long-suffering crowd. Cold water, anyone? Toilets? This way. Or even begin to pre-process admissions in an attempt to avoid the incredibly inefficient booth ticketing system that eventually followed. Or to form a queue in a shadier part of the courtyard. All too hard. To cap it off the main artery, the elevator, then went on the blink very early in the piece and defied all attempts to fix it for the rest of the day.

Coming out of the building late in the afternoon was a bit like taking in a breath of clean fresh air. Or like surfacing somewhere almost too light, airy and sunny after being so immersed in that dark bubble of terminal gloom.

There is something utterly morose about the fascinations of some folk in Tasmania. They do seem rather fixed on the dark side. Bottom dwellers it seems to me.

So it helps to remember that this really is one man's personal collection, and that some of it is good, and some of it is crap. Quite literally.

"The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,

For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again:

So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,

And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly."