TMAG & MONA

Just back from two days in Hobart on a work junket with some colleagues, visiting TMAG (Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery) and MONA (Museum of Old & New Art). TMAG is almost entirely closed as they prepare for a major overhaul, rebuild and refurbishment. The Master Plan to reinvigorate the city-block complex of eleven clustered buildings called for an injection of $200 million, of which they look like having just $30 million. Which is a great shame, though they are putting on brave faces and buckling down to do the very best they can with the time and funds available. On top of which they took time out to give us a comprehensive tour of the site and explain all their intentions. It sounds like, despite the limited budget, they are going to effect a significant transformation of the institution and I wish them all the very best with the project.

Meanwhile, one of the gallery spaces that currently remains open is the year-long series of immersive art experiences entitled ‘star/dust’. The current installation ‘The Reading Room’ by Brigita Ozolins (until 16 October 2011) is one of the most restful and inviting environments I’ve had the pleasure to inhabit for some time. There will be those (I suspect) for whom a room filled with books is not an inducement to stay but the very calm and comfort and informality of this gallery, with its deep armchairs, expansive woollen rugs, subdued reading lamps and spilling, cascading, stacks and rivers of books of every description had me wishing I could linger all day. It had the perfect blend of active and passive engagement for the visitors – from simply sitting and dozing (the staff assured me this was not uncommon), to browsing the books and dipping into their content, or sitting back to listen or watch the constant, quiet, evenly paced, projected video footage, huge on the end wall, of numerous people both known and anonymous, reading brief extracts from their favourite publications.

A significant part of the success (I feel) of the space was the comfort you felt as a visitor due to the obvious lack of order of the volumes – many thousands of them – stacked in a great undulating wall around the perimeter of the room and in seemingly random piles dotted about the floor and against the armchairs. Clearly, very clearly, they were not alphabetically sorted, or arranged by Dewey classification, or separated into size or subject categories. Equally clearly, you were permitted to just wander about, picking them up, flicking through, reading, scanning, browsing, and then putting them back down again, most probably somewhere else. Indeed I almost felt I could have selected a couple to take away with me to read on the flight back to Sydney.

But is it art? Well it’s not a library and it’s not a shop. It’s not a private home and nor is it a school. It’s certainly not a business venture or a sports venue. It does invite you to stop, to look, to ponder, to feel, to enjoy, to question, to explore, to react. Perhaps to react with anger, or disbelief, or humour, or frustration. Sounds a lot like art to me. I loved it. Beautiful. Well done Brigita and top marks to the people at TMAG that had the initiative and courage to put it on their calendar. Thank you.

Day two saw us at MONA via its dedicated ferry up the river from Hobart docks. I spent the trip on deck despite the strong wind and spots of rain from the clouds scudding across the sky and periodically blocking Mount Wellington from view behind us. Then up the 99 steps between sandstone wall and rusty steel fence, past the tennis court and enter through the giant sliding door in the wall of distorting mirrors. Clearly, this is not the typical 19^th or even 20^th century model of a museum. Brilliant! However, much is said (especially by MONA itself) about the ‘Museum without labels’ approach they have taken in an attempt to liberate the artworks in the galleries, so it’s a little disappointing that they are so very determined to herd you directly to the distribution point and briefing for their ‘wonderful’ O device. It is of course nothing more than an iPod touch running a dedicated app which gives you access to fanciful or factual information, artists’ or curators’ commentary, professional or popular critiques and a Facebook like ability to ‘Like’ or not the various exhibits as it tracks your location in the museum. As if it wasn’t bad enough that we spent most of the last century being told we needed a professional voice to give us permission to understand or appreciate what we experienced in our interactions with art, now it seems we must entrust our enjoyment and comprehension to the vagaries of popular opinion?

OK, it’s great that someone has thought to question the prevailing paradigm of art galleries’ presentation of information but it seems to me that they’ve done little more than replace one intrusive data delivery system (labels on walls or printed gallery guides) with another that’s just, if not more, intrusive – this one you have to wear around your neck and seemingly forever be fiddling with it to gather the particular output you desire. I say seemingly because, being the wanker I am, I went out of my way to not accept my O and instead, to wander the museum almost at random, unfettered by technology or other voices intruding on my enjoyment of the works and the spaces they occupy. And, thus freed from that constraint, what were my impressions of MONA? Several of the happiest, most interesting and inspiring hours I’ve ever spent in the presence of other peoples creative endeavours.

Creating sonic scapes by caressing suspended pot plants that emit curious and delightful sounds; making graphite rubbings from stones that survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima; observing the mummified skeletal remains of Pausiris as their coffin is slowly, digitally, excised from view; laying, seemingly floating, above my mirrored doppelganger, in a labyrinthine crypt filled with coded messages and drone-note harmonies; strolling, entranced and with many lingering pauses, past 150 pure white, cast from life, wondrously beautiful and diverse pudenda (not shameful at all!); watching my heartbeat give pulse and rhythm to a string of gloriously warm-red filament incandescent globes; and laughing with glee as I enter a doorway into what I thought was a giant synthetic rock, only to find myself in an infinitely long hotel corridor where the doors are all at once both tantalisingly inviting yet frustratingly locked, despite the ringing phones and barking dogs I can hear behind them and my expectation, my wish, to run along its length and hear a voice say ‘turn left … the other left’.

And the building itself invites play – a cylindrical corridor with booming acoustics, a crazy steel stair to nowhere in particular, vast sandstone walls that simply beg you to caress them and rusted steel balusters that chime like some grand xylophone when you slap them in passing (though I elicited an admonishing stare from the staff as I did this). Red velvet lined corridors that the visitors, like Allenesque spermatozoa, must penetrate to enter the womb of sexually explicit content beyond. Spiral stairs that beg you to race the glass elevator they encircle. Slender bridges, gaping voids, concealed doors and surprising fenestration revealing unexpected vistas.

The juxtapositions of old and new, related and dissimilar, large and small, were also delightfully considered. Spectacular gold and turquoise Egyptian jewellery, plush bench seats that bark, giant stone phalli immersed in water and surrounded by swimming fish, a dying bird falling through a drift of dandelion seed, ancient coins of such obvious weight and texture that you long to fondle them in your trouser pockets and a futuristic spherical vagina that you do indeed have to probe and fondle to elicit a (wonderfully humorous) response.

I know the choice of exhibits and style of presentation will not be to everyone’s taste, but they certainly appealed to me. A very obvious element of numerous of the works on display was their invitation to the visitor to interact (or ‘engage’ in current exhibition jargon) with them in a wide variety of ways from simply sitting or touching, to pressing your body against a photo-scanner or moving about erratically in front of light receptors, completing a rubbing (as mentioned earlier) or shaking your head to find words hidden in a digital stroboscopic projection. It really is (or was for me at least) a giant art playground – and all the better for it. My thanks to David Walsh (owner), Nonda Katsalidis (architect), Adrian Spinks (Operations Manager) and all the other contributors and staff of this wonderful museum (especially the barman who let me taste the Moo Brew 2010 vintage stout – wow!)

Finally, a quotation from a staff member that gives a clear insight into perhaps why this place works so well – ‘He (Walsh) wants you to push his boundaries as much as he pushes yours.’

Sun Sand Sea

Waking, not quite fully stretched out and not fully rested, in the back of the car as daylight creeps into the sky. It’s doubly dim, as I’ve covered most of the car windows with sheets of plastic to hide myself from the early morning joggers and dog walkers as they pass through the beachside car-park on their way to the sand. The front wind-screen, which I’d left clear the night before as I wriggled into my sleeping-bag, is now fogged with my night’s breath despite the small gaps I’d left at the top of the driver’s and passenger’s side windows – hoping to let in a whistle of evening sea-breeze but exclude the whine of midnight mosquitoes.

I’d hoped to be better refreshed after the enforced early night. The August evening had descended quickly after a short winter twilight and I’d not been prepared to linger any longer at the local pub after finishing my chicken Caesar salad and two, very slowly sipped, schooners of Carlton Black. I’d felt pretty conspicuous and not altogether welcome, in a bar filled with chatting couples and laughing groups of friends, sitting quietly in a corner by myself – eking out the beer and reading my book. But despite my improvised mattress of  lounge cushions wrapped in an old painter’s drop-cloth and my favourite feather pillow, the car was never going to be as comfortable or restful as the bed at home. Still, though not really needing an excuse as I’m an habitual early riser anyway, it prompts me to wriggle back out of the sleeping-bag, into my jeans and T shirt, and clamber out the back door to greet the day. Day four of my week-long surf-trip.

How lucky am I? A week’s respite from the office limbo, my partner generously holding the home front, the freedom of the car to explore every cove and promontory of the coast, and sun drenched, clear skied, cool breezed, clear watered, south swelled hours of idleness stretching ahead of me with each new dawn. The day is yet young and the warm gleam of the sun sparks blindingly from every ripple of sea from beach to horizon, making me linger under the raised hatch-back – bum on bumper, feet in the sand, eyes half shut, mind still hazy and nostrils flared for deep draughts of crisp sea air. Five minutes, ten, twenty? Does it matter? I rouse myself enough to dawdle to the Surf Club toilets and empty my swollen bladder in a steaming cadmium stream that splatters against the stainless steel expanse, warm droplets spattering the tops of my bare feet, cold on the concrete floor.

Back at the car, the same headland, rising behind me, that’s sheltering the beach from the fullness of the sea-breeze is sheltering also the bay from the best of the swell. But I want to savour more of the morning’s sun-drenched languor before I go looking for waves, so I sit back down on the rear bumper and rummage for the makings of breakfast amongst the various bags, buckets and bins stashed under seats and behind my boards, waxed and stacked beside the mattress, hungry for the taste of the cool water as my stomach is for the taste of muesli, milk, juice and coffee. The more civilised morning beachgoers are heading to the Club’s café for their caffeine hit, glancing enquiringly at my improvised fare and the ‘Wicked Campers’ ambience of the car’s contents.

Soon enough a local with clearly all day at his disposal ambles along and greets me with a warm curiosity and we start a rambling exchange as the sun slowly climbs, the tide slowly falls and the waves continue their inoxerable rush and hiss, up and down the softly banked sand of the foreshore. Rush and hiss. Rushhhhh and hissssss. Forming the white noise background to everyone’s greetings, conversations, musings and calls to dogs, gambolling on the beach – despite the signs: Dogs not permitted.

My new acquaintance is called away by an insistent ring from his mobile and reluctantly excuses himself with a pining last look to the water – he won’t be paddling out for a while yet after all – and with a roll of his eyes heads back to home and work and commitments and longing and life away from the beach.

His loss is my gain and I take his departure as a prompt to pack my bits and pieces away again, tidying the few loose items – socks, bowl, juice box, straw hat, map – remaining unsecured in the back of the car and with a final consultation of the road map, splayed provocatively across the passenger seat, I start the engine and crawl at a lazy pace up the slope and over the speed bumps and away from the sheltered refuge of the sun-soaked drowzy bay to crest the hill, feeling for the first time today the full flow of the breeze, cool and salt and damp as it worries its way around the imposition of the car, through the open window and with boisterous familiarity ruffles and musses my hair. Now I’m awake.

It’s a very short drive, barely worth the effort but for the want of having the warmth and convenience of the car and dry towel close and comfortable, should I in fact find some waves to ride – and the odds are looking good. Sure enough, rounding a corner, descending again into the next bay south on my stop-start solitary surf safari, wending my way slowly home again along the coastal fringe, as the hardy, gnarled and windswept trees and shrubs obscuring my view are left behind and I’m greeted by the open blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean receding to the sharp, clear line of the distant horizon from where long, slow, regular undulations of ground swell, fetched by the wind from who knows how many miles of open expansive fields of water – grazed by the slowly recovering herds of cows and solitary bulls of the azure deep; the humpbacks; the southern rights; the pilots and killers; the sperms; the truly majestic blues; lords of the oceans – sweep toward the beach below me, cresting the rock reef as they approach the shore and forming a clean ‘A’ frame peak with long, steep left and right curls of liquid joy, astoundingly free of riders, that rush and roll and faom and spray toward the sand. I can already smell the fresh coat of wax I’ll need to rub onto the deck of my board and almost feel its sticky bumps under my toes as I take my first drop of the day into a lazy, cruisy, winding, wending, run along the glassy, bright face of the wave. Oh yeah, it’s going to be a great day.

What the!?

I guess the best place to start is with some explanation -  but I have a habit of using too many words, of too many syllables, to say the simplest of things. So, with so much I want to say, I'm going to attempt to keep it brief and to the point - Q & A style.

What's AEON?
It's a journal - in both the 'personal diary' and the 'published magazine' sense.

What's it about?
I hope it will be a forum to share contributions from people - myself and others, past and present - that illustrate lives, years, days, or even moments, that have been lived to their fullest extent through a deliberate immersion in, and awareness of, 'now'.

But why?
Because I feel that in a world where it is increasingly easy to become absorbed in, even obsessed by, the virtual or digital realms; the media spin or advertising hype; the materialist or consumerist drive; there is a genuine value in the 'real'; the 'true'; the 'simple'.

Aren't there some major contradictions looming here?
Oh Yeah! Big time. I'm banging on about Real Life - in a virtual journal. I'm promoting an archive (the past), for potential readers (the future), whilst implying a superior validity for living 'in the moment' (the present). Trust me - I'm aware of the irony, but I'm blundering on regardless. Deal with it.

So what's it actually going to include?
Well, it's clearly a work in progress - but hopefully there'll be stories, photographs, drawings, quotations, some philosophy, some humour, some questions, some answers. A bit of this and a bit of that. You tell me! Please ..?

Can you give me any examples?
Plenty - assuming I find time to put them together, I'm currently thinking about including pieces on some or all of the following:
Thoreau's 'Walden'. Because I've just finished reading it for the first time.
My 'surf-trip' a couple of week's back. A week of doing very little - very intensively.
The Tao Te Ching and Taoism generally. At least, as I currently understand it.
Beer, bread, cheese & pickles. Because I want to run a 'Bar' that serves nothing else. (Oh, all right - maybe some coffee and mineral water too. Happy now?)
Less is More. Just because it is. So.
Selfishness - but not entirely the Ayn Rand type, more the Richard Dawkins model!
Water. No idea what exactly. Just feel compelled to include it in the list.
And (hopefully) any number of other things that people might send in for inclusion?

How do I make a contribution?
Simply make a comment (it'll come to me for moderation first) or send an email to aneternityofnow@gmail.com. Thanks!