HOBART.- Deep within the Australian island of Tasmania lays the city of Hobart, a quiet, quaint city known for being Australia’s second oldest capital city and for being home to the second deepest natural port in the world. Hobart isn’t some fishery on the periphery of modern society however, and in many ways the city is more contemporary than other, better known western cities, due in part to a new museum that has opened in the city, MONA.

The Museum of Old and New Art is a secluded attraction, hidden within the Moorilla winery and set into the bank of the Derwent River, but one that has enormously improved the cache of nearby Hobart, thanks primarily due to the sheer individuality and innovation that encapsulates the museum. As visitors enter the museum they are presented with an iPod with which they can log their thoughts and opinions of the installations and pieces on offer, at the end of the day receiving an email report on their experience, alongside all manner of web-based media. Such interaction with the public has simply never been done before in a museum or gallery.

The art in MONA is similarly progressive. Pieces such as Wim Delvoye’s “Cloaca”, an installation that is fed daily a diet of sandwiches and salad, these foods processed through a number of chambers in order to produce a sample of fecal matter at the end (which can be bought), is a wonderfully abstract exhibit, and one that took two years of negotiation to be brought to the museum. Alongside Delvoye’s creation is Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary”, a depiction of the Christian figure that was famously derided as “sick” by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani due to the depictions of female genitalia surrounding the figure.

It is not the first time in recent years that controversy has arisen on the contemporary art scene. In September 2014, it was alleged that the Westpiel Casino conglomerate in Germany would be auctioning off two Andy Warhol classics, Triple Elvis and Four Marlons, in order to fund a new casino within the Cologne area. With budget concerns and online alternatives like Gaming Club presenting a threat to the industry, it was perhaps justified of the conglomerate to do so. Thankfully, no such moves are afflicting the arts trade in Australia at present.

Getting such critically acclaimed exhibits as the aforementioned Holy Virgin Mary has been possible due to the museum’s founder, David Walsh. A Hobart native, Walsh founded the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities in 2001 and has become a renowned art collector ever since. Walsh’s creation is a monument to the gentleman’s personality and mind. Describing himself as “internal to the point of autism”, Walsh is a believer in the abstract and the understated.

Talking about the building, the curator noted that he wanted to create a place that “could sneak up on visitors rather than broadcast its presence” providing a “sense of danger” that would enliven and intensify the visitor’s experience of the art. With over 400 abstract and, at times, controversial works in his collection, Walsh has tried to make a space like no other, one that shatters traditional conceptions of what museums of art should be like whilst not falling prey to trite conceptualisms or ridiculous excess.