Brian Ritchie: photo by Ros O’Gorman via www.noise11.com
The unique and endemic Australian spirit that thrives in the wide open spaces and endless vistas of the bush, coastline and sky we find in regional and remote areas. Art we see in the cities is the fruit of a tree with the root systems spread throughout our vast land.
I’m a musician from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some of you may have heard my band, Violent Femmes. Without getting into all the gory details, let’s just say we started in 1981 and are still doing strong after selling about 4 million records and doing over 2000 shows in more than 40 different countries.
We first came to Australia in 1984 and became notorious for performing in far-flung areas of Australia when other bands played only Sydney and Melbourne and then they split. Tassie, Darwin, Townsville, Fremantle, but we did so in the face of some opposition from our own promoters and record company. For example, I noticed that we never played Tasmania and in 1989, insisted on booking a gig there. The word came back: “nobody would come see us; they have two heads down there; the last band they’ve heard of was Elvis Presley,” and so on.
But when we got there we played to a sold out, hysterical crowd at City Hall. When I eventually moved to Tasmania 17 years later, that goodwill served me well because many punters, including the current and previous Premiers and the owner of MONA himself, remembered that the Femmes came to Tassie when other bands shunned the place.
To make a long story short, my wife and I loved Australia, and Tasmania in particular, so much that we decided to move there. We expected a peaceful existence, punctuated by sporadic bursts of international touring but then I met David Walsh. David is an eccentric gambler who has amassed a fortune using amazing skills, math skills, bestowed upon him his Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s also an enthusiast. He is enthusiastic about more things in this world than he is not. Two of those things are music and art. He has amassed an enormous art collection and was [then] in the process of building a museum.
When I met David it got off to a rocky start … David’s first words to me were “I hate you”.
“Why?”
“Because I had to cash my dole cheque to see you at City Hall.”
After that things got better when we discussed putting together a festival of music and art ,to party and have fun until MONA opened.
My proposal was for a festival of live music and art related to or incorporating music to take place in conventional and unconventional venues around Hobart’s iconic waterfront. We went off to the races and prepared to present MONA FOMA (Museum of Old and New Art Festival of Music Art) about three months later. At this point the Tassie natives tried to instil fear in me by predicting that my ideas were too far out for Tassie: “it’ll never work,” and so on. David himself was not exactly a confidence-builder, requesting that I program music that would cause husbands and wives to beat each other and punters to flee the scene with their fingers in their ears. I ignored that.
But he did give me carte blanche and I developed a philosophy: Give the audience what they don’t want.
The Federal Arts Minister today said in our panel that arts programmers have a responsibility to give the audience what they like. I have the opposite view. Curators exist to bring art and ideas to light. It’s a conundrum. Music is the comfort food of the arts. People like what they already know. How do you get people outside their comfort zone? Our response was to expose them to an almost overwhelming array of talent and compel them to decide for themselves.
Our marketing was open and inclusive. Many free events, no arty attitude. We decided to create a utopian festival, where there are no lines drawn between high and low art, pop music and classical, visual and sound. There’s roughly an even split between international, Australian and Tasmanian artists, and collaborations between these groups are encouraged. Thus, pipe organ concerts, hip hop, jazz, opera, punk, symphony, electro, installations, audience participation, lights, lasers, and much more co-exist in a non-hierarchical modality, devoid of implied judgement or in-crowd shenanigans.
We knew there were not enough avant-gardists in Hobart to preach to the converted. It is easy to do that in a big city and attract a crowd, but we’re not a big city. If we want to be successful, we have to be inclusive and egalitarian in the program and presentation. We present avant-garde art and music to the general public, not solely to art aficionados.
This experiment was a smashing success, defying all predictions. Developing a forward-looking audience for arts in Tasmania and attracting ever-expanding visitation from interstate and overseas.
After only four years MOFO received the coveted Helpmann Award for Best Contemporary Music Festival – a coup for a non-commercially oriented festival experience … It’s good to keep with something, keep going, ‘cause year after year after year we’re getting more and more people coming down. And still there are more locals going every year, just the general population attending is much bigger.
When I met David Walsh he was uncertain about the prognosis for MONA. He predicted that he might be strolling the halls of the museum alone, or that protestors would block entry to the site. After three years of MOTA FOMA, we opened the Museum of Old and New Art. The acclaim was sudden and almost unanimous. It is considered one of the best museum experiences in the world. It’s the largest private museum in the Southern Hemisphere. People fly from Europe in private jets just to visit MONA.
The juxtaposition of contemporary art and antiquities reveals the universality of creative thought. But it’s more than just a museum … We have a winery, three restaurants, a weekend market, a community centre and more. It has become the de facto town square for Hobart. It’s the biggest tourist attraction in Tasmanian history … [with] 1.3 million visitors, and it’s free for Tasmanian citizens or residents. Still, 65% of the people are coming from interstate and overseas. In the process it has played a crucial role in redefining Tasmania nationally and for the Tasmanian people, themselves. Taswegians have claimed ownership of MONA and MONA FOMA. The days when someone would be dissuaded from visiting Tasmania are over.
The moral of this story is not that regional centres must build something flamboyant and grand, like MONA. Australia is mind-bogglingly diverse in scope. There are as many solutions as there are situations. The key is to proceed with confidence towards a goal. Ignore the naysayers. Plan well. But also harness the forces of chaos and chance to create the best possible outcome for your communities.
