14 April 2025How much??David Walsh, Jane Clark + Luke HortleHow much is a piece of paper worth? Not as much as we paid for this one. I told my colleague Olivier to bid up to £110,000 (too much). He bid £165,000 to secure it.
6 February 2025SchoolMichael BlakeI went to school in a small town out past the airport called Sorell. I got a pretty good education there, given my socioeconomic position and that of the school more broadly (which is to say, not great; not terrible, but skewed a little toward the latter). I’d already learnt to read, but school got me my maths and taught me titrations; foundations for a house I’d never build.
14 January 2025When Jane met HelenLuke HortleOne day last year, my colleagues Jane and Jarrod were discussing ‘Murray’s book’ about the Australian artist Ian Fairweather (that’s them namedropping Murray Bail, the writer). Jarrod found slipped inside the cover a copy of Jane’s exhibition catalogue about Fairweather, from her time at the NGV.
12 November 2024Symbolic immortalityDavid Walsh + Jane ClarkTowards the end of Renoir’s life he developed rheumatoid arthritis, but he kept painting. When asked why, he said, ‘The pain passes, but the beauty remains.’ That could mean that he wanted to look at his paintings tomorrow, but I take it to mean he wanted to perpetuate some sort of life after life: an opportunity for others to continue to enjoy his paintings, a form of symbolic immortality.
15 October 2024A soul in the scarvesLuke HortleA few years ago, the New Zealand–born, Berlin-based artist Simon Denny bought at auction seventeen silk scarves once owned by Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, and transformed them into a series of Patagonia puffer vests and sleeping bags.
18 September 2024My dead friendDavid WalshWhat does a close friend become when a close friend becomes dead? I’ve had a few of those, including Stephen, whose suicide virtually guaranteed the absence of a legacy, and Robert, who knew everything, including how to die.
10 July 2024‘ART IS NOT TRUTH’: PABLO PICASSOKirsha Kaechele‘… Art is a lie that makes us realise truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of [her] lies.’
4 June 2024Kirsha's Forest Diary, 2024Kirsha KaecheleThis diary entry is the first of many coming from members of our Forest Congress team and various representatives of conservation, First nations (Palawa and elsewhere), activism, and industry, who will share their experiences and perspectives.
7 May 2024Interview with Kirsha Kaechele about the Ladies LoungeKirsha KaecheleIn a recent ruling by the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele was ordered to allow men entry to the Ladies Lounge, her artwork at Mona. On a recent flight to Milan, Kaechele sat down to discuss the court’s decision and the future of the artwork.
5 April 2024Sun Sets on Mona FomaDavid WalshAt Mona Foma—Mofo—at the Peacock Theatre, we joined the Zen Circus, and Italian punk came to live, rent free, in my head.
17 August 2023Forest Economics Congress: New A$$. classKirsha KaecheleA few years ago, I was invited to do the keynote for the Tasmanian Economic Forum. You’ve got the wrong person, I told them. Of all subjects on earth, economics is the one I know least about. And definitely care least about. One need only begin to say the word, econo … zzzzzzz … and I’m snoozing off. But they insisted: they wanted someone from outside their world, someone fresh, to shake things up. Fine. But I should at least offer something relevant to their forum. So I did some calculations and presented this graph:
4 August 2022Before the cock crows / 849 daysDavid WalshDavid’s COVID-19 diary returns. 7/4/20–4/8/22.
2 September 2021Traffic LightsDavid WalshWhat happens when we want to undertake a journey, but a government-mandated intervention delays it, because, they say, it serves the greater good? Is that an infringement on our rights?
16 July 2021The Life of C.B.David WalshI met Christian Boltanski at a restaurant in Paris, introduced by his close friend Jean-Hubert Martin. Drunk we got. And fun we had.
23 March 2021David's response to Union FlagDavid WalshDavid’s response to Dark Mofo’s cancellation of Santiago Sierra’s Union Flag. Posted on 23 March, 2021.
29 July 2020Virus takes Mona, checkDavid WalshDavid wrote this statement on 17 March 2020, when the decision was made to temporarily close Mona due to COVID-19.
20 July 2020Melbourne BurningElizabeth PearceThe quiet, foggy streets of Richmond—the southern end, just before you cross the river, where Church street gives way to Chapel. On the radio, the early ABC news, which I listen to as I run, using my new bluetooth headphones. A pandemic present to myself.
10 April 2020Killers, cardinals, quarantines, jellybeans and vaccinesDavid WalshDavid's COVID-19 diary part four: Monday 6–Thursday 9 April 2020
6 April 2020More Disease, Less DiaryDavid WalshDavid's COVID-19 diary part three. Wednesday 1–Saturday 4 April 2020.
24 March 2020'Don’t Kumbaya'David WalshDavid's COVID-19 diary part two. Monday 23–Sunday 29 March 2020.
31 May 2018Interview with Charles RossJarrod RawlinsCharles Ross’s Spectrum Chamber was recently installed at Mona, as part of the extension to our museum, called Pharos. Mona curator Jarrod Rawlins spoke to Ross, who was in Hobart to oversee the completion of the artwork.
20 April 2018Interview with Ai WeiweiElizabeth PearceAi Weiwei's White House will be installed at Mona mid next year. I spoke to him during the recent Sydney Biennale, in the days leading up to the release of his film Human Flow, which is about the worldwide refugee crisis.
1 March 2018By chanceDavid WalshWhat’s the worst decision I’ve ever made? I’ve made a few bad ones. In my brief bad bridge days, I put down a cold four clubs contract, or so my mates told me. One former friend was particularly precise—‘the only bridge you seem to know is an open space spanning construct’. Those words taunt me thirty-five years later. And romance—I’ve messed up great relationships, and persevered with some shockers. After a bikie taunted me with, ‘Don’t bash us up’, I heard my weaselly fifteen-year-old voice, ‘I won’t, but only because you asked nicely’. When asked by the Israeli airline (El-Al) security guy if I was traveling with anyone, I gestured towards my Palestinian mate and replied, ‘Only that terrorist over there’.
9 February 2018The BelieverDavid WalshUnless you are an internet pioneer, a libertarian, a Deadhead, or my wife, you probably have never heard of John Perry Barlow, who died today after lingering too long (or not nearly long enough), but after having had a serious crack at reframing the internet in terms that didn’t make it a perverse analogue of the default world. —David Walsh
24 January 2018JourneyDavid WalshI bought, and years later sold, coins of Ptolemy I Soter. Ptolemy was a general of Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s death he ruled Egypt as satrap and pharaoh. He also built the world’s first lighthouse, the Pharos of Alexandria, a Wonder of the World and a model for all lighthouses thereafter. Our new wing of Mona is a lighthouse too, but not one designed to warn ships of the risk of foundering on rocks. Our lighthouse is a testimonial to the power of light as art—not just as a medium for artworks, but as an object.
29 November 2017Interview with James TurrellElizabeth PearceNext month, an extension to our gallery, called Pharos, will open, housing four new works by James Turrell, as well as works by Jean Tinguely, Charles Ross, Richard Wilson and Randy Polumbo.
21 August 2017PartsElizabeth PearceTasmanian artist Patrick Hall made this two-part cabinet, called When My Heart Stops Beating, as a commission for the opening of Mona in 2011. It was made to sit at the entry to what used to be known as Mona’s ‘sex and death gallery’ (which doesn’t exist anymore) and Patrick was specifically responding to the sex and death theme. ‘What I wanted were these two opposing sides,’ he said to me in an interview in 2011.
19 April 2017Rising tideDavid WalshIn my opinion, people consume meat because they like it, and they consume art because they like it. When art (even accidentally) makes explicit what eating meat entails (slaughter, pain, blood, guts) they don't like it. Of course, that's an ends-justifies-means argument, a fat-man-on-the-track argument, so it doesn't buy any social currency.
17 April 2017Don't handle with careElizabeth PearceI wondered whether Ah Xian could really call himself the true creator of the sculpture. What is the difference between Ah Xian, the named artist, and the person employed to bring to life his creative vision? That doesn’t seem so interesting to me now.
4 April 2017Architecture InterviewElizabeth PearceA conversation between Elizabeth Pearce, Mona Senior Writer and Research Curator, and James Pearce, Director of Architecture at Fender Katsalidis.
3 March 2017HooksDavid WalshElizabeth tells me Jannis Kounellis is dead. I already knew that, obviously. It demoted Putin and Trump to the second page of the National Enquirer. She wanted me to write a blog. Coz, you see, I like death. And Kounellis, who was alive, now isn’t.
9 December 2016Change our mindsMargaret HollisIn the Macquarie Point vision, David Walsh and Leigh Carmichael have started, among other things, a conversation about how a public space might appropriately refer to the history of Tasmanian Aboriginals, and the relationship of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
29 November 2016Here's a story…David WalshLater, at 4.10am, her name comes to me unbidden – Shirley Jones. I feel strangely placated by my memory. I didn't like her on TV, but now her death and my poem make us kindred sufferers of the real.
26 October 2016Hound in the HuntElizabeth PearceThe following is a conversation between David Walsh and Tim Jenison about Vermeer, Viagra, and the nature of genius. (Interviewed by Elizabeth Pearce, with a cameo appearance by Mona curator Jarrod Rawlins.)
19 September 2016SnagsElizabeth PearcePaul, 2014, is a creepy man-child self-portrait (of sorts), by Melbourne-based artist Ronnie van Hout.
24 August 2016All in good tasteElizabeth Pearce Painter, 1995, by Los Angeles artist Paul McCarthy, regularly tops our list of works most hated by Mona visitors.
8 August 2016I am oneSunday WalshMy name is Sunday Walsh. Apropos of nothing, I just had my first birthday. The relevance of that, apparently, is that the angle subtended by the Earth-sun system through the plane of the ecliptic is the same as that angle when I was born.
12 July 2016An interview with Mike ParrElizabeth Pearce Mike Parr’s Asylum [Entry by mirror only] was an exhibition and performance that took place during our most recent Dark Mofo festival. Parr took up residence at Willow Court, New Norfolk – a clutch of buildings that once housed Australia’s oldest asylum for the criminally insane. There, he drew continually for 72 hours, in memory of his brother, Tim, who died in 2009 after suffering from mental illness for much of his life. Video, sound, photos, objects, and installation works were dotted throughout the buildings. Visitors were welcome to come and go, on the condition that they brought a mirror to deposit somewhere on the site.
1 July 2016Interview with Kirsha KaecheleElizabeth PearceKirsha was interviewed by Elizabeth Pearce, Mona Research Curator and Senior Writer, in July 2016.
21 June 2016Clown PhysicsDavid WalshWhen we went to see the LHC there were a few Large Hangovers Colliding. We acquired these hangovers the previous night, celebrating Olivier's birthday ('What's good for a hangover? Drinking a lot the night before'). Olivier is a curator at Mona, but he lives in Geneva, so we were in Geneva, which is just down the road from CERN – the European Organization for Nuclear Research. CERN employs 12,000 people to do fundamental scientific research. It was at CERN that the Higgs boson was discovered a couple of years ago. That's a big deal, a Nobel Prize-winning deal, because the Higgs is the particle that allows mass in the universe (but not in the church, despite the press calling it the God Particle).
26 January 2016David Walsh, EarlobeDavid WalshMy meagre effort to implement Graeme Garden’s scheme to become an Earl and receive an OBE, and thus become an Earlobe, was long ago thwarted when Australia abandoned the English honours system.
21 December 2015Gilbert & George: a critiqueElizabeth PearceI’ve been trying to work out what I think about the art of Gilbert & George.
13 December 2015Stuff we are planning to doDavid WalshThere is an old Soviet joke that insists that ‘the future is certain. It is the past that is unpredictable’.
25 September 2015O death, where is thy Sting?David WalshWho'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh? —Monty Python, Four Yorkshiremen, 1974
17 September 2015More MonaElizabeth PearceWhen the museum first opened, this artwork, by Jon Pylypchuk, was displayed alongside a ‘spin’ painting by Damien Hirst.
14 September 2015First stoneDavid WalshRecently I proposed establishing a casino at Mona to shore up Mona's financial position, despite an existing monopoly held by the operator of Tasmania's two casinos, the Federal Group. In the last week or so opinions have been voiced on my proposal in parliament, in the press, and on air.
9 September 2015What would Peter Singer Do?David WalshPeter Singer recently published The Most Good You Can Do, wherein he advocates effective altruism, the idea that it is incumbent on all of us (at least anyone with the opportunity to read a blog) to live inexpensively, and to benefact causes that spend the donations in ways calculated to do the most good.
31 August 2015Thank you and goodbye Oliver SacksDavid WalshSometimes I find myself, in conversation, filling in a detail concerning an aspect of neurology. It might be the nature of colour blindness, or the clinical manifestations of synaesthesia, or the pain engendered by a misrepresentation of self. When I do this I'm occasionally, even often, right.
25 August 2015Goya and The Disasters of WarElizabeth PearceWe own one small etching by Francisco Goya, part of his famous series The Disasters of War. It has recently gone on display in the museum.
21 July 2015Introducing SundayDavid WalshThese are Gros Michel bananas. Unless you've carefully sampled exotic fruit varieties in Thailand, or are over seventy, you don't know what they taste like.
20 October 2014In New OrleansDavid WalshI'm in New Orleans and, right now, I'm missing my kids and my cat.
9 September 2014Making fun: Mona and BuchelElizabeth PearceThe Christoph Buchel exhibition closes next month.
14 July 2014The exploded infantRobin FoxI don’t have synaesthesia, or at least I don’t think I do, but it has been in my life since the beginning ... before the external beginning, even ... since the womb. My mother was a synaesthete. She associated colour, numbers and sound (particularly pitch), so my joke now is that I couldn’t burp or fart at the dinner table without her telling me it was the number ten, a slightly murky orange and a B flat.
26 June 2014Going out with a bangLuke HortleAnd, behold, I come quickly. —Revelation, 22:12 So reads the back of this year’s Dark Mofo staff hoody.
24 June 2014A letter of apology to Tasmanian Aboriginal people (and anyone else we have offended).David WalshLast week Mona opened Southdale/C’Mona, an exhibition that explores, among other things, the unintended consequences of created utopias. The colonisation/invasion of Tasmania by Europeans, and the debilities that resulted for its inhabitants, are among the areas explored. Another was the potential establishment of a Jewish nation in southwest Tasmania. That project, however, didn't come to such a fraught conclusion, since it disappeared, as did its major proponent.
23 June 2014An odd little taleDavid WalshLast night, after Diamanda Galás entertained, confused and mesmerised me in turn, I spoke to Dark Mofo revellers from Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane (and the latter complained that the Hobart weather was not nearly cold enough to justify the hype). One of them thanked me for the festival. Everybody does, even though I had very little to do with it. While Dark Mofo boss Leigh Carmichael and his mates put it together, I was on my honeymoon. And then she said, ‘Thank God it's not like the Big Day Out. Dark Mofo would be completely ruined if someone like Coldplay played’.
16 June 2014The truth about CinderellaElizabeth PearceI have stepchildren, and I am one. I suppose it is for this reason that I picked up The Truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian View of Parental Love, by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson.
25 May 2014The wrong orderDavid WalshTim, my brother, died over twenty years ago. Some of my earliest memories are of him writing poetry.
20 May 2014Me Boss’ MissusElizabeth MeadMe boss and his missus are on their honeymoon in Istanbul. Which reminds me: I told me boss’ missus I was planning to write a blog about their wedding, which I attended in March. Here it is.
17 May 2014ProtestDavid WalshThere is a lot to protest in Turkey. Injustice is rife, with crony capitalism at its heart.
18 April 2014Just a storyElizabeth PearceTessa Farmer’s The Depraved Pursuit of a Possum will be de-installed on Tuesday.
17 April 2014Beautiful SilenceDavid WalshForty years ago I remember waking up in recovery, and squealing like a child (which causes no shame, for I was a child) to be taken back to the ward.
3 March 2014Human beingsElizabeth PearceGee Americans are swell. We just had Steven Pinker and Mark Changizi visit us at Mona.
28 October 2013Now that we don't have LouDavid WalshIn the early 90s my endless search for technological satisfaction resulted in me adorning my stereo with a five CD changer, and it had a shuffle mode.
27 September 2013True LifeElizabeth PearceIn about two weeks, so I’m told, I’m giving birth to a gi-mungous baby.
30 August 2013My most familiar faithDavid WalshOver dinner last night Elizabeth, Kirsha and I chatted about my recent blogs and I remonstrated with myself that they focused on death, darkness and injury.
30 July 2013Diary of a disaster?David WalshMy nearly-nine-year-old daughter was leaving a high-rise apartment building in Sydney with her mum, Jemma, when she was struck on the back of the head with a rock, apparently dropped by some witless miscreant from a high floor.
5 June 2013Does my brain look big in this?Luke HortleYves Netzhammer’s The Subjectivisation of Repetition is on display at Mona now.
24 May 2013First world problemsElizabeth PearceI was halfway through Middlemarch when I got (‘fell’) pregnant.
13 May 2013StupidDavid WalshThe museum urn collection is stupidly growing, and its growing is stupefying me.
13 February 2013SynaesthesiaAnica Boulanger-MashbergThere are so many ways a thing can make you shiver. A cello in a crowd. A chorus in a stairwell. A story about a child who didn’t stand up for another child. The fury of chilli and the honest, expected loyalty of a potato. A single note. The memory, a moment later, of that same note.
18 January 2013New York I love you, but you're making me cringeLuke HortleA while ago, I met a photographer from The New Yorker at the museum.
17 December 2012I don't know muchDavid WalshI don’t know a lot about permaculture, but I know that the reason it works is that it increases the number of interactions between the species in a given plot.
11 October 2012Perfectly meatyLuke Hortle‘We try for purity but still we’re glorious blobs of meat.’ Michael McClure
27 August 2012Interview with Meghan BoodyElizabeth MeadNew York artist Meghan Boody’s bizarre pin-ball death machine, Deluxe Suicide Service, is on display in the museum at the moment.
8 August 2012Interview with Vernon Ah KeeElizabeth MeadVernon Ah Kee, a Brisbane-based artist, is co-founding member of the Aboriginal artist collective proppaNOW. His pencil portrait 'unwritten #8' is on show in our exhibition Theatre of the World.
31 May 2012Interview with Robyn McKinnonElizabeth MeadRobyn McKinnon is a Tasmanian painter. Her work Mrs Vermeer’s Kitchen, part of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) collection, will be shown in our up-coming exhibition, Theatre of the World.
4 May 2012There's a wolf in your headLuke HortleAs children, my sister and I would go to stay the night at our grandparents’ house on Chapel Street, Glenorchy.
12 April 2012Five prejudiced affairs with Mona (or, Anica and Mona, sitting in a tree)Anica Boulanger-Mashberg 1. The art of knowing whether you are flirting or The art of consuming modern art
7 April 2012Something Else for EasterDavid WalshEaster, 2012. My little girl's first words when she awoke this morning: ‘One more day to go’.
4 April 2012Something for EasterElizabeth MeadEleanor has asked me to write something about Easter. Eleanor is our Blog Mistress.
20 March 2012A Girl Like KirshaDavid WalshI wish I had a girl like you Who looks and talks and smells like you I know one girl would have to do But I wish I had two girls like you
9 March 2012Everyday HappinessElizabeth MeadI mentioned in my interview with Daniel Mudie Cunningham meeting the artist Nell (no surname) the same day. I left it in the transcript because I wanted to segue into this.
29 February 2012Funeral Songs - Daniel Mudie CunninghamElizabeth MeadOn display in the museum at the moment is Daniel Mudie Cunningham’s Funeral Songs.