David Walsh, the multi-millionaire owner of the Hobart-based Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania, announced via the museum’s blog, that the long-awaited extension, built primarily to house Elektra, a towering multilevel concrete amphitheatre by German artist Anselm Kiefer, has opened (19 December). Walsh says on his blog: “It seems that the budget has grown to over AUS$100 million. Much more than Mona.”
The day before the announcement a small select group that included 80-year-old Kiefer, Walsh and his wife, the artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele, gathered to officially open Elektra with a performance featuring dance artists Juliet Burnett and Cecilia Martin accompanied by a lineup that included bassist and composer Nick Tsiavos and vocalist Deborah Kayser.
Now open, Elektra becomes the second permanent installation by Kiefer at Mona, joining Sternenfall/ Shevirath ha Kelim (Falling Stars /The Breaking of the Vessels) (2007) and several other permanent installations by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Alfredo Jaar, Wim Delvoye and Charles Ross.
Based on a crudely constructed concrete amphitheatre at La Ribaute, Kiefer’s studio-estate, near Barjac in Southern France, Elektra is seemingly more than simply a building extension to Walsh who credits a 2007 visit to La Ribaute, during Mona’s construction, for what he describes as a “Damascene moment”. Just as “Jesus overwhelmed St Paul at Damascus”, Walsh and Kaechele were overwhelmed by “St Anselm” at La Ribaute, he writes.
At the time the professional gambler had just “bet the house” on building Australia’s largest privately-owned art museum and by his own admission was “over my head”. La Ribaute reassured him of art’s potency but in comparison he felt “Mona was going to be so drab, so unwhole” and “lacked inspiration [and] felt desperation”.
But after Walsh and Kaechele almost fell into a pit of water at the end of one of La Ribaute’s dimly-lit tunnels, Walsh found a substitute: stealing Kiefer's dim lighting for Mona’s network of tunnels. With Elektra, Walsh has made reparations to Kiefer for his earlier idea, commissioning the Neo-Expressionist artist to reprise La Ribaute’s amphitheatre on site at Mona.
Four years of construction and significant “scope creep”, was necessary to incorporate “new ideas and new works” according to Walsh who hopes Elektra gives others an opportunity to experience art as “compelling and as discomforting” as what he first encountered at La Ribaute.
Although the announcement was expected to include news of the revamped Mona library, a museum spokesperson confirmed bibliophiles will need to wait a little longer with “nothing else to report” at this time. Mona opened in 2011 while an annexe entitled Pharos, which houses works by James Turrell, launched in 2017.
