This year, MONA (The Museum of Old and New Art), created a inaugural winter festival called Dark Mofo.
"The Dark Mofo Winter Feast draws on age-old traditions of winter solstice celebrations and savours the core of these: family and community; feasting and produce; singing and music; subversion and masquerade; rebirth and renewal; fire and life."
But for us, it was just about the "Beam in Thine Own Eye" (Spectra) by Ryoji Ikeda and the Skywhale. These two pieces of 'Art' where visually captivating and drew in thousands of observers like moths to flame.
The Skywhale, mistaken by many at first for a turtle, was the work of sculptor Patricia Piccinini. The sculpture with multiple mammaries caused a bit of a stir actually.
On Wednesday, after Soccer, we met up with Daddy at around 6pm. We ate pizza in the car, in a freezing cold and dark carpark before venturing onto the Foreshore track. This track winds up and down hills and along the Rosny foreshore. Now Coder uses this track regularly, riding his bike in and out of town this way. But Coder is on a bike, and it's daylight, and he doesn't have 4 children to help safely navigate their way in the darkness. So his original estimate of a 15-20 minute walk ended up blowing out massively to 1-2hours return, with a 10 minute photo shoot thrown in.
But!
We did it! Amongst -much- whining and grumpiness I might add. A few silly jokes back and forth and several verses of Old McDonald distracted them from their complaining for a few minutes here and there. Luckily we did have the pram, so we did use that to swap out the two youngest, me either carrying the light one, or pushing the pram, depending.
Well some of us are still smiling.
On Friday night, once again after soccer, we took the boys in to see Spectra up close (along with the rest of Hobart it seemed!). It is actually a series of incredibly powerful searchlights, and you can walk in and around them. There was also really weird and eerie alien sounds playing, unquestionably adding to the ambiance and pure wow factor of the art piece.
We were also treated to the Skywhale lit up in all it's glowing orange glory. A site to be seen for sure!
3 of the boys in awe of the Skywhale.
Pichu was not a happy camper, he did -not- find it amazing or even slightly interesting. Terrifying was probably the adjective he would use if he even knew what an adjective was. He would not come out of his pram, and for him that is BIG, as he is always trying to get out of his pram at any chance. He sat quietly at first (luckily) whilst we all went into the middle of the Spectra, but then refused to get out for a photo and that was the beginning of the end of our short little visit to Spectra. I took the older ones in for a close look at Skywhale while Coder sat with Pichu a safe distance away (as measured by the volume of Pichu's obvious distaste for modern art and sculpture).
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Snapped on the iPhone so I can at least show him when he is older that yes he was in fact there also! He was keeping a close eye on that thing!
Overall it was just such a unique experience and we are so glad we persevered on both occasions. And also glad to get back home to warmth!
I am joining Jess and all of the fellow IBOT bloggers.
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