There's something about MONA - my relationship with the museum is disproportionate to only having visited twice before (admittedly, both extended visits), in 2011 and 2014, and so this trip came with plenty of existing associations, both general and in relation to individual works.
The current exhibition, "The Museum of Everything", is a 'takeover' by the travelling museum of the same name, installing an array of work by artists who are self-taught and outside the traditional art-making system (many with some kind of disability or mental illness); a roomful of Henry Darger in the middle but much, much else too. Not a field ('style' doesn't feel quite right) that has ever much appealed to me, but it does throw up some unusual modes of expressing perspectives and personal truths, as well as some interesting through-lines to the art canon.
In the first of those categories, ones that struck me included Marcel Storr's fantastically detailed cathedrals, William Mortensen's 1920s witchcraft photos and Ionel Talpazan's 'self-powered UFOs'.
And in the second category, notable ones were Hilma af Klint's theosophical watercolours from the 1930s, and Joseph Yoakum's mountain ranges and Anna Zemankova's 'interior botanies' (both from the 1960s).
Also very pleasing: the anonymous 'devil drawings' from early in the 19th century and Louis DeMarco's 'personal aphorisms'.
The presentation of that exhibition is quite conventional in some ways, going room by room according to loose theme - an interesting but, I think, effective choice to present and make some sense of a collection of pieces that (1) don't conform to any particular stylistic patterns or movements and (2) comprise the exhibition's argument for the value or interest of works created by outsiders.
* * *
And then there was the general collection, much of which I'd seen on previous visits, meaning that some of the most striking have taken on a difference valence through familiarity and time, as well as the space itself now being considerably less overwhelming, and either I've just gotten used to it or it actually has veered just a touch more conventional over the years. Anyhow, of note:
The current exhibition, "The Museum of Everything", is a 'takeover' by the travelling museum of the same name, installing an array of work by artists who are self-taught and outside the traditional art-making system (many with some kind of disability or mental illness); a roomful of Henry Darger in the middle but much, much else too. Not a field ('style' doesn't feel quite right) that has ever much appealed to me, but it does throw up some unusual modes of expressing perspectives and personal truths, as well as some interesting through-lines to the art canon.
In the first of those categories, ones that struck me included Marcel Storr's fantastically detailed cathedrals, William Mortensen's 1920s witchcraft photos and Ionel Talpazan's 'self-powered UFOs'.
And in the second category, notable ones were Hilma af Klint's theosophical watercolours from the 1930s, and Joseph Yoakum's mountain ranges and Anna Zemankova's 'interior botanies' (both from the 1960s).
Also very pleasing: the anonymous 'devil drawings' from early in the 19th century and Louis DeMarco's 'personal aphorisms'.
The presentation of that exhibition is quite conventional in some ways, going room by room according to loose theme - an interesting but, I think, effective choice to present and make some sense of a collection of pieces that (1) don't conform to any particular stylistic patterns or movements and (2) comprise the exhibition's argument for the value or interest of works created by outsiders.
* * *
And then there was the general collection, much of which I'd seen on previous visits, meaning that some of the most striking have taken on a difference valence through familiarity and time, as well as the space itself now being considerably less overwhelming, and either I've just gotten used to it or it actually has veered just a touch more conventional over the years. Anyhow, of note:
- "Kryptos" (Brigita Ozolins) was the one that I most wanted to revisit. It feels like the externalisation of something - some chamber - within myself. Still powerful.
- I visited the 'death chamber' for the first time, having been put off by the queues on previous occasions. Mummy and 'mummy' in a darkened, water-filled chamber through which one moves via a series of steps, a disquieting print on one wall that turns out to be a Serrano. It didn't move me, even though I got to go in alone.
- Took a beanbag for a few songs' worth of Candice Breitz's "Queen (A Portrait of Madonna)". Good for the soul.
- There were several Pat Brassington photos that I don't think were there before - good.
- Another new one: Patrick Hall's "Lure", its spectral faces projected onto fishing lures and morbid accompanying text, is terrific.
- The untitled Jannis Kounellis with the goldfish is sharp.
- Always good to see Nolan in this context, including the monumental "Snake".
