The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an adventureland of mutilated, disembodied flesh, technological wonder-pieces and other contemporary art, and all buried in a building in a hill in a winery, 30 minute ferry ride from Hobart. It’s a young space, a completely modern space, and one of the most exciting artistic centres to be launched in recent memory.

MONA. Just to say the name is a gasp and a groan of pleasure. Mooooooonnnaaaaaaaaa. It’s hard to know what MONA is before stepping through the door. All you hear beforehand is whispered excitement from somebody who’s been, or who know somebody who’s been, and it builds a wave of curiosity that starts at the back of the brain where it nags and nibbles and pokes with insistent glee. The website and marketing material reveal little, creating mystery and intrigue and utter, unbridled frustration. It all involves a leap of faith, into the wilderness and the distinctly non-cosmopolitan southern-most state of Tasmania, where fast-paced lifestyle generally goes to have a rest.

Words fail to explain MONA. It’s a place to experience with all the senses, but struggles to be definable. You can hear it, see it, smell it (in certain places, a distinctly olfactory smell), touch it, taste it. The building itself, and the artery lines of the the personalised iPod information guides (The O), are just as much a part of the experience as the creative works. It offers total, all-encompassing sensory participation, and you almost skip from Fish in Bowl With Knife through to the heart-beat rhythms of steampunk Victorian globes leading a path across the ceiling. You’ve entered the Chocolate Factory and as you descend through Basement Levels 1, 2 and 3, you start to see potential in everything that’s ever been encountered in life.

Hobart remains a sleepy little town, but MONA brings a bright shining star to guide people to it. What groups where involved in making this happen? Why did this project fulfill so much potential where so many other projects only seem half alive? Someone was reaching for the stars and they grabbed one from the sky, with work and passion, and drive. And a decadent, unseemly, sophisticated star it was, to corrupt us into a rejection of convention like the serpent with the apple. Perhaps a bold claim for a venue which houses a room with 30 television screens, each with a Madonna fan singing The Immaculate Collection off-key. We’re a strange bunch, us humans are. Isn’t it great?