‘BEAM IN THINE OWN EYE’ ENDS JULY 28, 2013

Only two weekends remain to visit MONA’s first large-scale public art exhibition, ‘Beam In Thine Own Eye’ before it ends on Sunday 28 July. Experience it while you can.

‘Beam In Thine Own Eye’ opened during the inaugural Dark Mofo 2013, including installation environments, interactive performances, sculptures and projections at Hobart’s Macquarie Wharf Shed No.1 (MAC1).

Since then, more than 9500 people have visited, and as the Dark Mofo rush has subsided, there’s no time like the next two weekends for visiting – although you will still need to book ahead for Kurt Hentschlager’s ‘ZEE’ (the smoke and strobe room) and Anish Kapoor’s ‘Imagined Monochrome’ (the eyelid massage experience) – call +61 (3) 6277 9971.

‘Beam’ is an unusual art experience. In contrast to the standard, tangible fare of an art exhibition with works on the walls, this is a series of events that gather in the viewer’s mind, questioning the ‘real’, and reconfiguring our own physical world. Experiences are synthesized within the viewer’s own brain in a series of artworks and installations that compel us to become active viewers of artworks, exploring the limits of our perception to realise our own notions of the sublime. It’s different for everyone.

Curators Nicole Durling and Olivier Varenne invited a variety of Australian and international artists to bring individual explorations of sensory and cerebral experiences – from sound works of auditory trickery (Tim Bruniges, Lara Favaretto), to rooms filled with fog, light and sound that re-calibrate our optical perception (Kurt Hentschlager, Ivana Franke), to the monumental man-made creation of the sublime (Ryoji Ikeda).

WHEN: Noon – 7pm, Friday 19 July, Saturday 20, Sunday 21, Monday 22 July
Noon – 7pm, Friday 26 July, Saturday 27, Sunday 28 July, 2013
WHERE: Macquarie Wharf Shed No.1 (MAC1), Hunter Street, Hobart, Tasmania. Entry is $5.
MORE: www.darkmofo.net.au/program/beam-in-thine-own-eye
DOWNLOAD: The free app for more info, to add comments and debate the artworks with David Walsh, on the app

MONA owner David Walsh said: “When you shut your eyes you will still be able to see. But if you close your mind, you will lose your capacity to learn. In [‘Beam In Thine Own Eye’], we are grappling with powerful forces, those that shape our version of reality within our minds, and yet we hope to be able to touch minds whatever their hitherto held ideas about the way the world works.”

‘Beam’ Curator Nicole Durling said: “Beam In Thine Own Eye’ is a gathering of artists whose creative drive is not about tangible realisations. The works are internal, visceral.”

‘Beam’ Curator Olivier Varenne said: “‘Beam in Thine Own Eye’ plays with visual perception; looking at how each individual encounters objects and phenomena in space and how they then create their particular reality. You may discover that things are not as you think they are.”
MONA