{"id":258819,"date":"2025-12-30T22:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T22:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/258819\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T22:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T22:48:09","slug":"multilevel-anselm-kiefer-amphitheatre-unveiled-at-mona-museum-in-tasmania-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/258819\/","title":{"rendered":"Multilevel Anselm Kiefer amphitheatre unveiled at Mona museum in Tasmania – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Walsh, the multi-millionaire owner of the Hobart-based Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania, announced via the museum\u2019s blog, that the long-awaited extension, built primarily to house Elektra, a towering multilevel concrete amphitheatre by German artist Anselm Kiefer, has opened (19 December).\u00a0Walsh says on his blog<\/a>: \u201cIt seems that the budget has grown to over AUS$100 million. Much more than Mona.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day before the announcement a small select group that included 80-year-old Kiefer, Walsh and his wife, the artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele, gathered to officially open Elektra with a performance featuring dance artists Juliet Burnett and Cecilia Martin accompanied by a lineup that included bassist and composer Nick Tsiavos and vocalist Deborah Kayser.<\/p>\n

Now open, Elektra becomes the second permanent installation by Kiefer at Mona, joining Sternenfall\/ Shevirath ha Kelim (Falling Stars \/The Breaking of the Vessels) (2007) and several other permanent installations by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Alfredo Jaar, Wim Delvoye and Charles Ross.<\/p>\n

Based on a crudely constructed concrete amphitheatre at La Ribaute, Kiefer\u2019s studio-estate, near Barjac in Southern France, Elektra is seemingly more than simply a building extension to Walsh who credits a 2007 visit to La Ribaute, during Mona\u2019s construction, for what he describes as a \u201cDamascene moment\u201d. Just as \u201cJesus overwhelmed St Paul at Damascus\u201d, Walsh and Kaechele were overwhelmed by \u201cSt Anselm\u201d at La Ribaute, he writes.<\/p>\n

At the time the professional gambler had just \u201cbet the house\u201d on building Australia\u2019s largest privately-owned art museum and by his own admission was \u201cover my head\u201d. La Ribaute reassured him of art\u2019s potency but in comparison he felt \u201cMona was going to be so drab, so unwhole\u201d and \u201clacked inspiration [and] felt desperation\u201d.<\/p>\n

But after Walsh and Kaechele almost fell into a pit of water at the end of one of La Ribaute\u2019s dimly-lit tunnels, Walsh found a substitute: stealing Kiefer’s dim lighting for Mona\u2019s network of tunnels. With Elektra, Walsh has made reparations to Kiefer for his earlier idea, commissioning the Neo-Expressionist artist to reprise La Ribaute\u2019s amphitheatre on site at Mona.<\/p>\n

Four years of construction and significant \u201cscope creep\u201d, was necessary to incorporate \u201cnew ideas and new works\u201d according to Walsh who hopes Elektra gives others an opportunity to experience art as \u201ccompelling and as discomforting\u201d as what he first encountered at La Ribaute.<\/p>\n

Although the announcement was expected to include news of the revamped Mona library<\/a>, a museum spokesperson confirmed bibliophiles will need to wait a little longer with \u201cnothing else to report\u201d at this time. Mona opened in 2011 while an annexe entitled Pharos<\/a>, which houses works by James Turrell, launched in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Walsh, the multi-millionaire owner of the Hobart-based Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania, announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[88693,365,362,363,364,1128,102380,366,18,117,19,17,85878,133730,4504],"class_list":{"0":"post-258819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-anselm-kiefer","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-australia","14":"tag-david-walsh","15":"tag-design","16":"tag-eire","17":"tag-entertainment","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-james-turrell","21":"tag-museum-of-old-and-new-art","22":"tag-museums"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115810959527294876","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}