MONA FOMA left us exhausted and MONA staff have packed away the Cloaca machines from the Wim Delvoye exhibition but there is still excitement to be had. New art works have been added to MONA’s infamous Sex, Death and Taxes gallery.
Inspired by Delvoye, Lara Giddings has created “The Policy Machine”. Treasury predictions, GST forecasts and the legacy of Michael Aird are fed in and progress through several digestive chambers before being excreted at the far end as Labor agenda.
“The Policy Machine has a very strict diet,” explains Giddings, and indeed one of the highlights of the process is feeding time, when an accountant carefully removes polling results, the concerns of the public and any trace of traditional Labor values that may sully the input. The machine is housed in a room of its own but most punters are kept away by the smell of the fear of deficit.
More popular is Will Hodgman’s “Drip.Fall”. Hodgman generates random words from news polls, the media and the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry which are then fed into a device that renders them into falling water. They are visible for seconds before splashing into nothingness.
“Snake Oil” is a gigantic work that stretches across one wall, made up of smaller individual panels. This piece, workshopped by the Intergovernmental Forestry Agreement Stakeholders, is impressive when viewed from a distance but disappointing when you close in to study the detail. Interpretation and evaluation of the piece, both by critics and the artists themselves, has been erratic.
Another must see is “Queen/King?”, popularly known as “the Madonna room”. A bank of small video screens depicts head-shots of the Parliamentary Labor Party as they sing numbers from Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection”. One group belts out “Like a Prayer” along with David O’Byrne, another contingent croons “Rescue me” led by Lara Giddings, while a third band doesn’t appear to know what to sing.
There are many other attractions. The mummy of Brian Harradine, a sculpture of Lara Giddings on the hustings moulded in chocolate (“Suicide Premier”) and next to the painting of a dog having anal congress with a man hangs a picture of Eric Abetz and Will Hodgman.
A major disappointment is Tattoo McKim, a human art-work whose indelible markings have faded somewhat after being exposed to harsh spotlights over the last two years.
Contrary to popular belief, the installation of videos featuring performances from the self-mutilating Aktionists and involving savage cuts is not by Lara Giddings.
