“. . . objects with a multi-layered backstory.”
The first work I see upon entering Namedropping at Mona, Museum of Old and New Art is Darren Sylvester’s Filet-O-Fish, 2017 – a baby blue psychiatrist’s couch printed with a design lifted from a vintage McDonald’s burger wrapping. It first came to my attention in 2018 when US pop star Katy Perry was photographed lounging across it at the 2018 Melbourne Art Fair. I also clock three photographs of Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a Han dynasty urn, 2015–19, and the leather-bound book and case for the Wu-Tang Clan’s highly prized seventh album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
As the title suggests, cultural recognition is a key theme of Namedropping, an exhibition designed around the idea that through association with celebrity or significant moments in history, the status of an object or person can be elevated (or lowered). With the seeds of the exhibition initially sown during Tasmania’s COVID lockdowns, the curators – Jarrod Rawlins, Emma Pike, Sarah Wallace, Jane Clark and Luke Hortle – have been working on the show since 2020. The result of the long lead in time is a meticulously researched and thoroughly documented exhibition that traverses a broad range of work, from art and high fashion to historical objects and literature.
Like Sylvester’s Filet-O-Fish, brand names and their associated icons continue throughout Namedropping. Divided into multiple rooms, the show begins with a pool room complete with a pristine Holden Torana (LX) SLR 5000 A9X Sedan (Mona owner David Walsh once referred to the museum as his “hotted up Torana”) and cabinets filled with manly treasures (trophies, letters written by Charles Darwin and Walsh’s Order of Australia Medal). Further in, there is a room covered with exclusive Louis Vuitton x Mona wallpaper where He Xiangyu’s Tank Project, 2011–13, a life-size army tank made of Italian leather, sits flaccid next to Tom Sachs’ 2001 patinated bronze statue of Hello Kitty. Nearby is a work by Tino Sehgal which defies being interpreted or photographed, with the artist preferring visitors to experience the work in the gallery space only.
He Xiangyu, Tank Project
As the exhibition continues, the name drop goes deeper and explores the connections between vanity and luxury, social structures and class systems, power and disadvantage. A solid journey of discovery all the way through, Namedropping is strongest in those objects with a multi-layered backstory, and this is most evident in several works by British artist Cornelia Parker.
Inconspicuously positioned in a glass case in the final room is Shared Fate (Oliver), 1998, a dapper little doll dressed as Oliver Twist from Charles Dickens’ nineteenth century novel of the same name. Purchased secondhand by Parker at an East London market, the doll has been sliced in half by the guillotine that allegedly beheaded Marie Antionette. As curator Emma Pike tells me, “We’ve put all this history and connotation into a doll that was found in the markets. Does that doll now have the status of Mary Antoinette imbued into it? Or is it about the violence? Just a simple action changes everything.”
Cornelia Parker, Shared Fate (Oliver), 1998, installation view, Namedropping, Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, 2024. Photograph: Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania
Delving straight into the heart of Namedropping’s premise, this idea is further illustrated in Parker’s Stolen Thunder, 1998, a series of white cotton handkerchiefs marked with black smudges. Reading the entry on the O (Mona’s app), one discovers the stains are oxidised silver collected by polishing objects like Guy Fawkes’ Lantern and Henry VIII’s Armour. “This is the embodiment of essentialism,” Pike goes on to say. “Literally just holding the essence of an object and then calling it an artwork and bringing all the history of it to the front.”
Additional highlights are many and include Linda Marrinon’s plaster sculpture Germaine Greer, 1972, a statue detail of We the People, 2011–16, by Vietnamese artist Danh Vo and the complex colonial narrative spinning with historically loaded items in Huang Yongping’s Les Consoles de Jeu Souveraines, 2017. With numerous hidden details among its 250+ pieces, Namedropping rewards those who take their time to meander, read the curator’s notes on the O and look at the art. Even if you choose not to, you can at least drop a few names.
Briony Downes is an arts writer based in Hobart.
Mona, Museum of Old and New Art
15 June 2024 to 21 April 2025
Tasmania
