Museum of Old and New Art

I finally made it! A few years ago MONA was opened in Hobart, along with great controversy about the arts displayed. It began as a project to display the private collection of a squillionaire professional gambler. It has an entire room built specifically for Sidney Nolan's Snake piece. And a funky water feature that makes words out of water dropping down. Plus changing exhibitions. And a poo machine. They feed it twice a day, and then it has blown glass vessels that convert the food as the internal organs do, and then at 2pm it ... relieves itself into a little dish.

It aims to confront and shock, with a lot of death, sex and violence. But it also has some pretty funky things - light globes that pulse to your heartbeat, and (one of my favourites) a mummy and its X-Ray displayed in a spectacular room. Currently it is housing an exhibition called Theatre of the World. Our state museum (TMAG) is being renovated and expanded at the moment, so a lot of its pieces have been put into storage. Theatre of the World takes ancient and old pieces from the TMAG vaults and places them alongside new works, to interesting effect. Where a traditional museum might classify by age or country, this exhibition looks at themes.

The building is fantastic, with split levels and mixed materials. It has been dug out of the side of a cliff, and maintains rough sandstone walls inside, with extra metal, wood and glass bits to complement it. Any sense of time passing is lost, as the entire outside world is blocked out by layers of stone and earth.

I found the collection of art a little depressing in some ways. It was fascinating, some very interesting pieces, but a strong emphasis on death, destruction and the decline of mankind. Some pieces are just intriguing, without giving any particular message, and there were a few small light touches, but they'll be placed alongside images of pessimism. I couldn't help but think that perhaps there's quite a large gap in the market for quality images of optimism, that maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy when such emphasis is put on the negative.

Still it was interesting, and I enjoyed going around with Erica showing me all the best bits. We only had a couple of hours, but I thought I should really go before heading out into the big wide world again. It's probably the kind of place that needs lots of visits to get the most out of it anyway.