MONA
26 March 2012
Theatre of the World
Museum of Old and New Art
23 June 2012 to 8 April 2013
All things are one thing and that one thing is, in turn, obvious and exotic and beautiful and plain and elegant and
prosaic and deep and shallow and rich with a richness that makes all things grand. – David Walsh, Preface, Theatre of the World catalogue
Creating a dialogue between works across different cultures, artistic styles and times has been at the heart of Jean-
Hubert Martin’s curatorial passions. His latest exhibition, Theatre of the World, will open at the Museum of Old and
New Art (MONA) in Hobart on 23 June, providing another visual challenge and sense of provocation for visitors to
the museum.
Theatre of the World will be one of Australia’s largest collaborations between a private and public museum, with 180
works from David Walsh’s private collection at MONA and around 300 works from the Tasmanian Museum and Art
Gallery’s collections. The works will be displayed across 17 of MONA’s galleries alongside special commissions and
selected loans from other important Australian and international collections. The works will form, in today’s
vernacular, a visual search-engine-result spectacular – in real time and space.
Jean-Hubert Martin argues that our staccato lives, our electro-static-burdened senses and the complexity of our
world means we are now merely “grasping at scraps of knowledge” or abdicating responsibility for our lives to the
experts. So, he hopes to help us restore our ability to see again the passion, the fear, the mystery, the darkness and
the beauty of our collective preoccupations and learnings across time. He does this by creating visual linkages and
relations between disparate shapes, designs and objects spanning cultures, time and intent. He hopes to take
visitors on an experiential voyage that moves them from the visceral to the symbolic, and the factual to the poetic.
Objects across Time and our World
In Theatre of the World visitors enter a series of galleries or environments containing a prodigal and discontinuous
array of objects reflecting some 4,000 years of human creativity. Works such as: stuffed and mounted birds; parts
of animal skeletons; Chinese ceramics; water colour portraits from Georgian England; First World War “trench art”;
Egyptian stone carvings, mummy cases and funerary objects; African beadwork and woodwork; Aboriginal bark
painting and artefacts; natural history illustration; Melanesian shields, masks and drums; corals and shells; curiosities;
contemporary art works, photographs and videos; geological specimens; scientific instruments; and teapots, along
with more than 80 barkcloths from across the South Pacific.
Works will be on display by artists including Marina Abramovic, Alanbarra, Dieter Appelt, Jean-Michel
Basquiat, Thomas Bayrle, Samuel Beckett and Marin Karmitz, Hans Bellmer, Tamy Ben-Tor, Binyinyuwuy,
Mark Bishop, Michel Blazy, Arthur Boyd, Daniel Boyd, Polly Borland, Pat Brassington, John Bunguwuy,
Günter Brus, Tom Chamberlain, Herbert Thomas Dicksee, Jake and Dinos Chapman, John Coplans, Wim
Delvoye, John Dempsey, Bill Djartjiwuy, Lee Dongwook, Max Ernst, Erró, Tessa Farmer, Jan Fabre, Peter
Feiler, Lucio Fontana, Ruth Frost, Tony Garifalakis, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Gober, Francesco Graziani,
Gregory Green, Merv Grey, Patrick Guns, Neil Haddon, Fiona Hall, Patrick Hall, Brent Harris, Ivor Hele,
Petr Herel, Ricardo Hernández, Damien Hirst, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elizabeth Mary Hocken, Wayne Hudson,
Adelaide Ironside, Paa Joe, Wassily Kandinksy, Vernon Ah Kee, John Kelly, Killoffer, Taiyo Kimura, Emily
Kame Kngwarreye, Jannis Kounellis, Juul Kraijer, Oleg Kulik, Robert Scott Lauder, Fernand Léger, Sol
LeWitt, Laith McGregor, Robyn McKinnon, Alasdair McLuckie, Allan Mansell, Gordon Matta-Clark,
Louisa Anne Meredith, Boris Mikhailov, Manolo Millares, Matthew Monahan, Maw Mununggurr, Nell,
Hermann Nitsch, Sidney Nolan, Adam Putnam, David Noonan, Stieg Persson, John Perceval, Pablo
Picasso, Francis Picabia, Sam Porritt, Peter Peri, Joe Rose, Julie Rrap, Claude Rutault, Markus Schinwald,
Sinibaldo Scorza, Andres Serrano, Petroc Sesti, Jason Shulman, Roman Signer, Jacqui Stockdale, William
Strutt, Walter Tjampitjinpa, George Tjapaltjarri, Felice Varini, Nicolaes Visscher, Ruth Waller, Mithili
Wanambi, Judy Watson, William Wegman, Brett Whiteley, Patricia Wilson-Adams, Pedro Wonaeamirri,
Erwin Wurm, Yirawala, Ah Xian.
A 16th Century Inspiration – Giulio Camillo’s Memory Theatre
The importance of universal knowledge was a preoccupation of Renaissance intellects, including the renowned
Italian philosopher, Giulio Camillo (1480 – 1544). During the 1530s, Camillo began to construct for the French
King François I (1494 – 1547) a memory theatre now known to us only through a text he is said to have dictated
towards the end of his life. The ideas were kept secret because, in the king’s eyes, Camillo’s theatre was an
instrument of power. It took the form of a small wooden amphitheatre, sitting opposite the king’s throne, and
contained a galaxy of texts and objects representing the history of knowledge at that time; juxtaposed to trigger,
systematically, if the viewer had enough knowledge and understanding, the wonders of god and man.
Almost five hundred years later, Jean-Hubert Martin with Tijs Visser, Olivier Varenne, Nicole Durling and the
MONA and TMAG teams have created a 21st century version.
Jean Hubert Martin said: “Theatre of the World will attempt to revive visual thinking – a practical philosophy taking
material form in objects. Life today is about visual images. We take so much of our learning and communication
from television and the Internet but we are not learning how to analyse images. We have lost confidence in our own
ability to understand and have handed responsibility to the experts, with Theatre of the World we hope to encourage
visual thinking as a counterpoint to the abstraction of language”.
The Curators
Jean-Hubert Martin and his co-curator/exhibition designer, Tijs Visser, have worked together on a number of
exhibitions including the Visser-inspired, Artempo, in the Palace Fortuny for the 2007 Venice Biennale and the
Moscow Biennale (2009). Artempo looked at how humans have engaged with and interpreted the passage of time
across cultures, history and art forms, and it inspired David Walsh to team up with Martin for MONA.
Jean-Hubert Martin has served as director of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Kunsthalle Bern, the Kunstpalast
Dusseldorf, and the Paris Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie. He is best known for the 1989
exhibition Magiciens de la terre and, more recently, Artempo, the Moscow Biennale (2009); and in 2011 he was
curator for Christian Boltanski’s work at the French Pavilion for the 54th Venice Biennale.
Mat(tijs) Visser started his career in architecture and theatre in Holland. He was head of exhibitions at the
Museum Kunstpalast Dusseldorf (2001 – 2008). For the 2009 Venice Biennale he curated, together with Daniel
Birnbaum, the Gutai show at the Central Pavilion. In 2008 he established the Zero Foundation.
Olivier Varenne has been a senior curator and international art buyer at MONA since 2006 and worked with
Martin as co-curator for the Moscow Biennale 2009. In 2010, he curated On and On at Casa Encendida Museum,
Madrid.
Nicole Durling has been a senior curator at MONA since 2006. Based in Melbourne, Nicole was Sotheby’s
contemporary art specialist before signing on with David Walsh. Working directly, in Australia, with emerging, midcareer
and established artists, she has curated, developed and supported projects including music festivals, sound
art performances, ephemeral interventions and permanent commissions.
A catalogue will be published to coincide with the exhibition with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Tijs Visser, David
Hansen, Thierry Dufrêne, Kirsten Brett and David Walsh.
The Collaborators
The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is the second oldest museum in Australia, having its origins in Australia’s
first scientific society, the Royal Society of Tasmania (established in 1843), and it became Tasmania’s state museum
in 1885. TMAG remains Tasmania’s leading art, natural history and cultural and heritage organisation, and is one of
only a few institutions worldwide that combine a museum, art gallery and herbarium. TMAG’s collaboration with
MONA is not only its most extensive but also the first time many of the pieces have been displayed.
MONA, Museum of Old and New Art houses the David Walsh private collection, in Berriedale, near Hobart.
Since opening in January 2011 more than 440,000 people have visited. With the museum’s location, its
subterranean structure built into the sandstone banks of the Derwent River, the owner’s personal approach to
displaying his collection, and the public’s response, we will continue to challenge the mainstream.
Delia Nicholls, Research Curator, MONA
