Peacocked by David Walsh's MONA: Paying $40 to Have an Existential Art Crisis
- Bryony Large
- Jul 26
- 7 min read
It's been a week since I spent an afternoon in David Walsh's MONA, and my visit has turned my mind into an absolute whirlpool.
My entire philosophy on art has come into question, and the internal battle I have been experiencing has been irritating me daily. So let's flesh it all out on the blog!
For those reading who may not know, The Museum of Old & New Art (MONA) is located in Hobart, Tasmania.
But don't be fooled by its bog-standard name. This spot is an absolute labryinth of confronting, strange, brilliant and, at times concerningly disturbing art, described by its very own founder as a "subversive adult Disneyland."
The museum is quite the anomaly in its inception alone, privately built and owned by professional gambler (gambling is a profession?) David Walsh. David is a 65 year old geezer who took his childhood love of maths, probability and logic to the betting tables, paving a golden path to owning his very own global gambling syndicate.
Who knew if you were good at maths you might end up building yourself a $300 million museum housing a $100 million art collection? Can't relate - was always more of an English Lit gal myself.
As you might have guessed, the consensus on big David's legacy is quite complicated. Some think he is the best thing since sliced bread for Tasmania, completely transforming its tourism and cultural landscape for the better. Whereas some believe, even David himself, that the museum is his way of peacocking his wealth. Perhaps two truths can exist at once, no?
Anyway, one can continue psychoanalysing David by actually visiting MONA, because wandering through the museum feels a bit like slicing his brain in half and having a peek. After all, every artwork has been hand-selected by DW himself, so you get a pretty good idea of what makes him tick...
Okay enough of me waffling because I think it would just be easier to show you what is inside this gigantic cupboard of curiosity:
Cloaca Professional (2010) by Wim Delvoye
How do I explain this in polite terms? Cloaca Professional is an installation that replicates the digestive system. It has a feeding time of 11am, and has a bowel movement at 2pm which is then showcased for all to see, and smell...
Do I need say anymore?
Untitled (1991–2026) by Jannis Kounellis
A bowl of water placed on a chair with two goldfish swimming around a kitchen knife. So yeah...
Cunts... and other conversations (2001 - 2011) by Greg Taylor and friends.
This is what you think it is. A collection of 151 life-size porcelain casts of women's vulvas, created from impressions of real women's bodies.
Well, at least you get a variety to cast your eyes upon (HA! Did you see what I did there?)
I've purposefully flung those three artworks at you with very little context because quite frankly that's how MONA presents them. You stumble across a poo machine, a fish bowl with a knife and a wall of porcelain vulvas before you've taken a breath to make any sense of it.
So it's only fair that I replicate that experience for you, obviously!
However, after doing a little more reading once I'd left the museum, it would feel like a disservice not to share some of the ideas behind these works:
Cloaca Professional plays with a fair few interesting tensions. Reducing the human digestive system into a robotic, industrial production line, we're confronted with the question of whether humans are actually complex beings or just simply biological machines. It also questions the value of art since the machine literally manufactures something worthless, taking the mickey out of the art world's obsession with rarity, luxury and monetary value. If a machine can produce 'art' every day, what makes something valuable? By placing it smack bang in the middle of a multi-million dollar museum, is poo valuable now?
Kounellis was a key figure in the Italian Arte Povera movement, which celebrated ordinary, everyday materials rather than traditional artistic luxury. Suddenly, a chair, a bowl, a kitchen knife and a couple of goldfish are taken out of their regular context and audiences are forced to look at them differently. A kitchen knife isn't inherently sinister; it's a normal cooking tool that everyone has in their homes, but placed independently beside living creatures in a gallery, with no supervision, and you're left with a weird, unsettling and ethical tension.
I'm actually a fan of Cunts... and other conversations. Even if my British bones shiver at having to type out that word for the second time...
Historically, female bodies have often been depicted by male artists for male audiences and presented in a very particular, very performative, idealised way, but this work completely blows that out of the water. I'm also pretty keen about the choice in medium: porcelain - a material that traditionally notes delicacy, refinement and preciousness. Something we'd expect to see in fine decorative objects. Greg uses that same material to present something we're all conditioned to view as vulgar, private or even shameful. AND it is confronting in the best way IMO - it asks an uncomfortable viewer if the discomfort arises simply because of the artwork, or because of your own learned attitudes towards the body?
Now let's get one thing straight. I'm no prude when it comes to provocative artwork, and you'll never catch me arguing that art can only be good if it's pretty. My favourite contemporary artist is Tracey Emin, c'mon! [Insert Shameless Plug]: I even wrote about her!
And MONA is home to some more of my favourite artists of all time. Let us roll the red carpet out for some outstanding Brett Whiteley, Marina Abramović and Anselm Kiefer works I saw at MONA:
The Naked Studio (1981) by Brett Whiteley
I actually have to bite my own tongue writing this because I've always argued that my definition of art is whether it can make you feel something.
...Even if that feeling is nausea.
Yeah, I'm looking at you, Delvoye.
But perhaps I've been too vague in my own art philosophy. Because MONA truly made me feel something around every corner. I was shocked. I was provoked. I was confronted. But those feelings disappeared almost as quickly as they came for a fair majority of works. Once the initial surprise wore off, I felt a little empty and moved on quite quickly.
Ironically, I found myself appreciating these works more once I'd left MONA than while I was actually standing in front of them. Which makes me wonder whether the museum's emphasis on immediate emotional reactions sometimes comes at the cost of slower, more thoughtful engagement.
And I really don't think provocation is the enemy. Some of the greatest contemporary artists have built incredible careers around making audiences uncomfortable. But with artists like Abramović and Kiefer, the discomfort feels like a by-product of asking difficult questions about humanity, history or the body. It isn't the intentional outcome, but a vehicle.
So when I feel that provocation is mistaken for depth, that's where it loses me. If the artwork's greatest achievement is making me gasp for thirty seconds before I wander off to the next room, I struggle to find myself coming back to it mentally afterwards.
So my relationship with MONA is complicated.
I wouldn't say I particularly enjoyed my visit. But then, is the purpose of art to simply be enjoyed?
After all, you don't need me to tell you that history is full of artists whose work was laughed at or shunned before going on to completely reshape the art world as we know it. Monet. Picasso. The Impressionists. The Cubists. The Fauves. Change and innovation have never exactly received a welcome party in the arts sphere.
But my spiral doesn't stop there (stay with me).
Where is the line between an artwork being challenging and becoming self-indulgent? Is there a point where provocation becomes solely spectacle? And how much of my reaction is influenced by the fact that I've spent the last twelve years happily wandering around fairly traditional museums and galleries?
At times, it kinda felt like MONA was one massive middle finger up to every convention of the art world. No wall labels - instead, there's an app that defines its own explanations as 'Art Wank'. The lighting is every H&S coordinator's worst nightmare, and even one of the Visitor Hosts casually told me, "This artwork produces shit because contemporary art is shit."
Nice.
So I'm wondering whether my discomfort wasn't just with some of the artworks, but with the museum itself?
When I spoke to my partner about MONA, he had a completely different take. As someone who often feels quite alienated walking into traditional galleries, he thought MONA sounded a lot more inviting. Less intimidating and serious, and more playful. Somewhere he'd actually want to spend an afternoon (RIP to my delusions that he actually LIKES me dragging him around to art galleries...).
And perhaps his insights are the point.
Maybe the things I found frustrating are the very things that make MONA so successful for people who don't usually see themselves reflected in the traditional museum experience.
Besides, I spent three hours there. Museum fatigue had definitely started creeping in by the end, and I was becoming increasingly desensitised to the constant attempts to shock me. But three hours is still three hours. The museum held my attention, challenged me and, a week later, has somehow managed to convince me to write nearly 2000 words about it.
And yes - I've written 2000 words and I still can't tell you whether I enjoyed MONA.
But what I do know is that I haven't been able to get it off my noggin ever since...
And perhaps that's a far more interesting measure of a museum's success.
I'm severely interested in your thoughts on MONA. Have you visited before? If not, would you like to based off of my reflections? Let me know your thoughts on Insta @bryonylarge and we'll have an art existential crisis together!
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