This Summer's New Sensation
The ladies of Tasmania land a lesson at MONA
In December I landed back in my childhood home in Tasmania. It’s a romantic house at the end of the world – above a stone-terraced garden, on the edge of the Hobart Rivulet that runs from the mountain to the sea. My late parents began co-creating this space in the early 1970s. They often said, we bought this house instead of visiting Yugoslavia. They couldn’t pay for both at the same time. So our first trip to my father’s homeland was delayed for a few years, we flew there in 1979. I was eleven years old. After nearly two decades away, my father wanted my mother to meet his family, and he wanted me to meet mine. He wept when he peeked a glimpse of his homeland from the window of the Qantas plane. I’d never seen him cry before.
That visit changed the trajectory of my life. This is possibly what my Tasmanian grandmother (a dedicated ‘reds under the beds’ Cold War Catholic, and a close friend of Dame Enid Lyons, the namedropping starts now) feared. Her youngest daughter had chosen to miscengenate with a foreigner – presumably Serbian Orthodox, which he technically was as a baptised person but in reality certainly wasn’t; and presumably a Communist, not that she ever asked about his politics. She issued a Sophie’s Choice-style ultimatum to my mother – her Tasmanian family, or her Balkan fiancé.
My mother made the braver call, which left her strangely isolated within Tasmanian society, where my cousins are still everywhere. It also left my father bemused. And sometimes angry. What kind of family would do this?
To compensate for this lack, and for the geographical distance of my Yugoslav family (across Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia) my parents made our home a place where everyone was welcome. My father was a chef and gardener and he cooked the food, featuring pig or lamb on a spit, rotating at the water’s edge. My mother was a musician and ran a kindergarten where she broke some Tasmanian rules about how to educate small children, she wore great frocks at parties and poured wine and played Spanish music on 78 rpm vinyl she’d bought in Spain on a cruise to Europe with nanna. My childhood memories are of our home being open and welcoming to people from Hungary, Germany, Austrian Jews who’d ducked the Holocaust (including our remarkable neighbours Hedi and Ferdi Fixel, three houses up, who ensured the continuation of Australia’s oldest synagogue in Hobart), all the Baltics, all the Balkans, with locally-born Tasmanians who didn’t fit or sit with the British-style class system here, and even ahead-of-their-time vegans (my father never stretched to tofu on a spit, bless him).
It took me a while to understand that most Tasmanians weren’t inclined in this direction. Then I exited as a teenager, to study law from Canberra to Cambridge.
Scroll forwards many years. Returning from the wider world only because my parents were ageing, a couple of years later up popped the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in 2011.
Thanks to David Walsh, also born and raised in Tasmania, with a few of his friends. MONA’s opening themes were sex and death. Walsh made his early money from gambling on blackjack tables with colleagues at Australia’s first legal casino, Wrest Point, a stone’s throw from our home – at that time the only truly cosmopolitan space to which the Tasmanian public had access. Blackjack was another of my late father’s favourite pastimes, he affectionately labelled the much younger Walsh and those friends ‘the boys’. My father never once visited MONA. (My mother never visited MONA either, because she died exactly one year to the day and night before it opened).
That’s great, because he wouldn’t have been interested in the art, and he never enjoyed conversations about sex. He might have enjoyed the gambling table installed as part of MONA’s current exhibition Namedropping – near Walsh’s 2016 Order of Australia for ‘distinguished service to the visual arts through the establishment of MONA, and as a supporter of cultural, charitable, sporting and education groups’. In another room you can see the younger Anna Schwartz (then Ellenberg)’s bare arse in the corner of one of the best paintings in MONA’s collection, The Naked Studio (1981) by Brett Whiteley.
Along with the Ladies Lounge, I think that Namedropping is the best thing MONA’s landed since Theatre of the World in 2012-14. Which also was presented in Paris, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin and colleagues. Of course I did miss MONA’s blockbusting exhibition by Belgrade-born Marina Abramović in 2015 – because I was back in Belgrade.
I wrote an after-party piece about that astonishing MONA opening event in 2011, where all kinds of people were welcome. Walsh broke his own no-comment rule to write that he liked my description of him as a ‘collapsed Catholic’. So I kept receiving invitations to MONA parties.
The most recent was to the last presentation (for now) of the Ladies Lounge at MONA. That one wasn’t so much about Walsh. It was more about his current wife, American-born artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele. Her most visible Tasmanian intervention since she landed here a while after MONA opened, has been the Ladies Lounge. It’s been a performance artwork flowing from a small space wrapped in emerald-green silk curtains inside the museum. Again, all kinds of people were welcome. Provided they were ladies, or people who identify as ladies.
Last year, the Ladies Lounge was subjected to a legal challenge by a man from New South Wales alleging it breached Tasmania’s anti-discrimination legislation. At first instance, the Deputy President of the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled that it was unlawful. In a strangely curdled way – and clearly influenced by media reports of courtroom behaviours by MONA supporters, that he hadn’t even noticed at the time. In November last year, that finding was overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court of Tasmania. Controversy surrounded all of this – heightened when it was revealed that the Picassos hanging in the original installation were fake. This eased when the Succession Picasso in France accepted Kaechele’s apology, pricking the balloon of some parochial Australian arts commentators with a tendency to trade on the negative. One veteran critic reportedly said, ‘A museum can’t do this kind of thing and expect to maintain much respect from people around the world’. He has since lost his day job. Cry me the Derwent River.
Freshly lawful, the Ladies Lounge reopened at MONA for a month across December and January.
At another MONA party bringing in the New Year, where all kinds of people were welcome, I met Canadian-Israeli film and television producer Niv Fichman. As we spoke before everyone danced until dawn, I googled and discovered he is globally eminent. His latest work is The Sympathizer, an espionage thriller and cross-culture satire based on the 2015 novel by Vietnamese-American Viet Thanh Nguyen and set in the Cold War, recently released on HBO and Binge. Fichman’s first work out of film school was in 1981, about a music festival in Zagreb – called Zivjeli!, a drinking toast which translates from Croatian to mean, ‘To life!’.
Based in Toronto, Fichman had travelled to Tasmania to park himself at MONA for three full days and nights. Speaking to me back in frozen Canada later in January, he said –
As an art lover and just a person on the radar for good old fashioned controversy, I’ve been following the various controversies about [the Ladies Lounge]. I was just following it without even making too much connection as to where it was – especially the Picasso controversy, which I found delicious. And Kirsha, who I didn’t even know about … she was just the lady who perpetrated this controversy, and I thought she was amazing for doing that, and snubbing her nose at the art establishment for the cause of entertaining ladies. Fabulous!
And I was already planning to come to MONA, so I decided to go there for a few days and stay in one of the pavilions and see if I could get into the Ladies Lounge. I thought I couldn’t, that there was no way. That elusiveness was tantalising. I thought maybe I could use my charm or whatever to claw my way in – in the off hours, to have a quick look or whatever.
So when I got there it happened to be the first or near the first day, of the reopening. With this notion men can only come in they are servants or slaves, which I found great.
So did Fichman gain entry? That day, he almost missed the Ladies Lounge.
It’s always been tucked discreetly, next to the lounge curated by MONA men featuring a display of 76 life-size porcelain vulvas on the wall. That artwork is called Cunts….and other conversations (2001–11) by Australian sculptor Greg Taylor, as part of his ‘stated intention to help women accept their bodies’. Around the time MONA opened, I was director of the Inglis Clark Centre at the University of Tasmania – which I’d established to advance the legacy of 19th century Tasmanian jurist Andrew Inglis Clark, one of the founding fathers of Australia’s Constitution and also a staunch believer we should be a republic. I was asked by the then-Governor General of Australia, Dame Quentin Bryce, the first woman to hold that position – Australia’s main First Lady, we are still not a republic – to curate a selection of the best emerging Tasmanian creative talent for an afternoon tea she wished to host in the Organ Room at MONA. The staff member who gave Bryce and her husband an art tour that included this vulval display, clearly a bit nervous, smoothly referenced its title. Neither Excellency batted any eyelid, but it was clear they enjoyed the sensation.
Back to Niv, in wanderment in MONA. Suddenly, he heard the sound of ladies lounging –
There was this noise, this squealing. An amazing noise, like ecstatic higher pitched female music – it drew me. Where is this delightful noise coming from? It led me to the curtains.
I enquired if I could go in. Two ladies at the front looked me up and down and they said well, just one question, would you take your shirt off? … I said of course I would, I’d be delighted to. They said wait here for a minute and brought the gentleman who was running it in a super-mean dominatrix role. He looked me up and down and shook his head, and said no.
I looked at the ladies manning the desk and their façade broke for a minute. They had a visible pang, this guy is being crushed. They said don’t worry come back in an hour.
So I did, and they said wait a minute here and brought back the guy who said come with me. He took me round the back. He didn’t make me take my shirt off, I was slightly disappointed. He made me put a jacket on. I was told no photos, I wasn’t there to enjoy but to serve.
At that point there was a poetry reading with limericky and slightly dirty verses, the ladies were shrieking and drinking champagne …
[He handed] me a large feather duster and my first task was to dust a sculptural piece hanging on the wall – around 50 penises in various stages of erection. I thought this is my time to prove myself so I will be fastidious and methodical. So I very meticulously dusted each one of those penises, I went from top to bottom and left to right. I didn’t miss a single one. The gentleman looking after me said you’ve very impressive, you’re taking it very seriously. Why don’t you go and give the ladies some grapes? They were on a silver platter. He said don’t take the platter, just the grapes. So I took a bunch and went to a woman and offered them, she said ‘no. thank you’. The whole group very politely turned me down. I had to find a different approach. So I held them hanging more from the stem, saying these have been freshly washed. They accepted them, the magical words were ‘freshly washed’. Then I got to graduate to the pouring of champagne. And I was slightly manhandled, I’m not going to lie …
And there were male strippers. And I was very focused on my service, and realised what a piece of art that was with me as a participant in this social commentary. So subtle in some ways, yet so in your face in other ways. And so beautiful and perfect.
This was one of the great experiences of my life.
Why so? I asked Fichman, What was the new sensation? ‘I‘m used to being the boss – of men and women – that’s my role.’
Scroll forward to the closing (for now) Ladies Lounge party. I was there with many other ladies and people who identify as same, ranging from the fairly young to the fairly old. Including an unusually tall transgender person, with whom I discussed the advantages of being … well, the tallest people in the room, and the obvious allure (to my mind) of taller men. They explained they were wearing very high heels. Centre stage was another lady who also seemed very tall, maybe because she was on a platform. Stage-named Betty Grumble, thirty-something Emma Maye Gibson stripped herself naked and used her upended and remarkably strong body in the Ladies Lounge in ways I’ve never seen – including as a floral vase (use your imagination) the first time I visited this summer. This time, she worked with red paint to generate ‘pussy prints’ as works on paper, that were then kissed by Kaechele using lashings of her trademark red lipstick. Ladies were invited to speak in response to these works, and also to contribute to a collage of response. The crowd went wild. Someone started an 80’s playlist featuring Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Kaechele joined Gibson onstage, wearing a black outfit with red batwings. I couldn’t identify the designer –
Feragamo. Bought in 2024 but transformed into Balenciaga in 2025. Through champagne and communal typing.
Kaechele then sprayed the room with Pol Roger after playing the (real, not fake) Murano chandelier with the champagne bottle as an instrument – and removed the Feragamo/Balenciago to dance more freely. As did most of the ladies in the room. Some couldn't, bless them. But I was never one of those girls at school who changed hiding under their towel before swimming lessons. And I paid some of my way through law school as a life model at an art school – so much easier than waiting on tables or being a paralegal. (There was just one man in that class, who only ever sketched my naked feet.)
Later, I asked Gibson – a seasoned performer who cut her teeth in the queer and avant garde scene in inner-city Sydney, where she’s still based – what was new about her own sensation in that room?
It was folding in to a role as a host and a witness. I listened and I gave permission to enjoy the lounge in a different way. And that space wants to go beyond polarity, beyond right wing and left wing, beyond all experiences as separate. What I’m interested in is how we go beyond polarity towards change, progession, healing, and understanding. Not without trouble .. maybe women and people in that space who hadn’t been heard before, felt they could soften into some grief or hope or confusion together.
That image will be in my mind for my entire life – everyone taking off their clothes. Kirsha and I were dj-ing, it was so beautiful to see all those bodies celebrating and releasing together.
I also asked MONA Ambassador Led Emmett, originally from Britain with a cute Liverpudlian accent to prove it, and who was in fully perfect service mode in that closing party, if he found the nudity confronting. Especially around people he knew? His clear answer was no –
[I attended] The Divine Comedy at Dark MOFO a few years ago – it was the most extreme thing I’ve seen. It was confronting on so many levels. It wasn’t just nudity, it involved blood sports, faecal matter and more. It ticked every box known to man … Since that experience, anything I see touching on these aspects of things, I am now less shocked.
So did he experience any new sensation?
Betty’s always had a tastefulness about her, it’s about body appreciation rather than just for shock’s sake.
As Betty was wrapping up, Kirsha took the mantle as far as getting naked goes. She took it to eleven. She was the instigator of ‘mass hysteria’, with all the ladies undressing – the first domino fell.
At some point there was a broken glass, I was a bit worried with so many naked bodies. When I was brushing up glass at vagina height, I realised I probably should avert my eyes.
Celebrating the Ladies Lounge Supreme Court ruling, MONA has commissioned a scent called The Verdict, created by Tasmanian perfumer Craig Andrade of The Raconteur. The bottle has a hand-rolled gold-lustred ceramic top crafted by the Material Institute, Kaechele’s other big project in Tasmania.
I sampled it in the MONA store, admiring its FUCK THE PATRIARCHY notation (alluding to feminism) and gold-on-legal-green packaging (always the law nerd) – but could reach no conclusion. Scent is all about sensation. And it is always a performance, which requires an audience.
So I invited Felix Stoffel, the sommelier at MONA’s Source restaurant, to be ‘the nose’. I didn’t blindfold him. The scents sprayed on four points of my body were Blackberry and Bay cologne by Jo Malone, a daily classic replacing Chanel Number 19 in my fragrance collection; a bespoke bottle called Rolex commissioned for the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne, gifted to me as a guest in their corporate box (I admit, I’ve privately renamed it The Novak); Black Afgano for men and women by Nasomatto, featuring tobacco and cannabis and incense; and The Verdict, which foregrounds florals and juicy citrus.
Stoffel was sweetly torn between Black Afgano (strongly masculine, and purchased in Belgrade where it’s distracted a few tall men) and The Verdict (strongly feminine, and for him evoking heady frangipani and the beach at Byron Bay). By now I smelt a bit like a brothel. Fortunately my houseguest, a twenty-something environmental water policy expert from Brisbane, and also a lady, arrived and saved the day – she did the sniff, and immediately landed on The Verdict. Another win for the Ladies Lounge!
As I’ve written about the Ladies Lounge along its road so far, I’ve received endless feedback about comparisons with single-sex clubs. These are specifically lawful across Australia. In Tasmania, they include the men-only Tasmanian Club, and its sister women-only Queen Mary Club across the road, both also a stone’s throw from my Hobart home. I was last in the Tasmanian Club at a pre-dinner drinks function hosting a delegation from the Finnish Parliament, when Tasmanian power brokers were backing the controversial proposed construction of the Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. Our host was a strong and old school forestry advocate, a club stalwart. I’m not dumb enough to expect Balkan-style hospitality anywhere in establishment Hobart, but I was abruptly shown the door before dinner. Not before I’d snuck a view of the best portrait in town of Andrew Inglis Clark, who remains my best Tasmanian boyfriend. The younger Finns, a man and a woman, in the delegation were utterly perplexed at the concept of this club – and we’d peeled off with our gin and tonics to peek at the rest of the art and the chintzy upstairs bedrooms.
My Tasmanian mother briefly was a member of the Queen Mary Club in decades past, and told me she wrote them a blunt exit letter after concluding it was the dullest space imaginable. She was a performer, not a joiner – and a person who embraced new sensations in many directions. She also told me that sometime in the 1950s she dyed her blonde hair mauve to match a (yes, mauve) silk suit – always a skirt, never pants – that she’d sewn herself, accentuated with a splash of Miss Dior.
I believe my mother would have loved the Ladies Lounge. I don’t know what her new sensation might have been there. Never mind my nanna’s. Use your imagination.
My own new sensation in the Ladies Lounge was … still so law nerdy.
I simply loved being in a provocative and elegant space that had been challenged, tested and found to be entirely lawful – by the highest court in the State of Tasmania.
