LEO: I recently made a one-day trip to Brisbane to interview the best-selling author Geraldine Brooks, who was in Australia to promote her latest novel, Caleb’s Crossing.

Besides being a fine novelist, Brooks, who lives six months of the year in Australia and six months in the US is a splendid conversationalist and talk ranged from the disappointing performance of President Obama to the appalling opportunism of Sarah Palin.

The subject of Tasmania came up a number of times, first of all when ordering the wines. My eyes lit up when I spotted a D’Meure pinot noir on the wine list. Alas the price had been whited out, a sign that this particular vintage was out of sotck but I brightened up when I saw other favourites listed, from Frogmore Cree, Domaine A and Stefano Lubiana.

There are powerful competitors in the market but tiny Tassie punches above its weight in the pinot class. Brooks was impresssed, but her most rhapsodic comments were reserved for MONA.

“I can’t wait to bring my boys back,” she told me. “It’s the most esciting new museum in the world, and that includes Bilbao.”

Given that Brooks has travelled to and worked in most places in the world, this was high praise, but she is but one of umpteen visitors who bend one’s ears about this new attraction.

In fact the only negative comment I’ve heard came from a Launcestonian who told me that she felt so disgusted she wanted to rush out of the building and throw up.

But then those folks up north are a funny bunch. Anything that happens south of Oatlands doesn’t register on the northern radar.

From Mercury, June 25

MONA STARTS TO UNDRESS

As you know we like to keep our core promises. So things are going to change. Actually they have been changing, subtly, over the past few weeks.

But the process is about to snowball.

Starting July 3 our staff will begin by removing two of the Dasha Shishkin paintings – Ella Fitzgerald can do no wrong, 2008 and Love is nothing but a sore, 2008 along with Del Kathryn Barton’s Making Love with Love (Version 1), 2004 and We had been picking flowers for centuries, 2003.

They are on the ‘top’ level or B1.

So, if they are your favourite works. That’s life.

In their place we are installing a new work on loan from Chiharu Shiota. You may remember her dark and tangled piece, In Silence, 2011, that caused quite a stir when she burned a grand piano in front of Detached gallery.

Her new work, Dialogue with Absence, 2010, will be installed over three days, commencing July 5. It’s also tangled, but not in the same way. Come and watch.

We have also replaced Toby Ziegler’s Vitalis, 2007 with another Fiona Hall wonder, Further Shore, 2002 – 2005. B1, near Zizi the Affection Couch, 2002. The ethereal Alabastron is to be replaced by the vitrine of arrowheads.

July 3: Last day to see Truck Corridor, 2004
July 10: Last day to see Conrad Shawcross’s Loop System Quintet, 2005, Stefano Curto’s Nero Infinito, 2009 and Taiyo Kimura’s Untitled (stool for guard), 2007.
July 12: Last day to see all the works in Touring Gallery 1 – mesh wall gallery, and the Library.

These galleries and the library are closing so we can install Experimenta Utopia Now, which opens, August 5.

Museum opening times: Daily 10.00am – 6.00pm. Remember too, from Tuesday, July 27, 2011 we will close every Tuesday.