The highlight this year was the opening of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in January. MONA is the largest private museum in Australia and showcases the collection of David Walsh who owns the Moorilla vineyard in Berriedale, Tasmania. It contains an impressive selection of contemporary art works including a major installation by Anselm Kiefer as well as works by internationally renowned artists such as Wim Delvoye, Marina Abramovic, Jenny Holzer, Jannis Kounellis, AES+F and many prominent contemporary Australian artists including Fiona Hall, Callum Morton and Ah Xian. Brigita Ozolins, who lectures in Art Theory at the Tasmanian School of Art also has a major work in the collection, the installation Kryptos. Sidney Nolan’s Snake is another highlight of the collection. In addition, there are many antiquities from ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, pre-Columbian etc.
The other main arts event was Ten Days on the Island in late March/early April which featured art exhibitions including Reconstructing the Animal curated by Dr Yvette Watt
(Associate lecturer in Fine Art at the Tasmanian School of Art); Volcano Lover by Lucy Bleach (Associate lecturer in Fine Art, Tasmanian School of Art) and River Effects: the Waterways of Tasmania curated by Malcolm Bywaters (School of Visual and Performing Arts, Launceston) and Professor Noel Frankham (Head of the Tasmanian School of Art) . Associate Professor David Stephenson (Tasmanian School of Art) had a major exhibition in the Julie Saul Gallery, New York Light Cities: Tokyo, Melbourne, San Francisco, Las Vegas while Milan Milojevic (Head of Printmaking, Tasmanian School of Art) had work selected for the exhibition Personal Space: Contemporary Chinese and Australian Prints exhibited in Sydney then touring China. Dr. Llewellyn Negrin (Head of Art and Design Theory, Tasmanian School of Art) had an article ‘The Self as image: a critical appraisal of postmodern theories of fashion’ re-published in The Fashion History Reader ed. by Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil (New York & London: Routledge). This article has also been translated into Chinese and is to be published in the journal Art and Design Research.
Llewellyn Negrin