Cringefest at MONA

In April I was in Tasmania, and I wanted to visit  MONA  (Museum of Old and New Art), the exciting new gallery in Hobart.  And Rachel Edwards had had a brilliant idea: let's stage a Cringefest at the MONA markets! I readily went along with the idea of reading from ...old, only old...writings. Normally one wants to present the best, the shiniest, and maybe the newest of what one has written. But this would be like peering into the bowels of the machine: where did this stuff come from? And in that sense it was a great complement to MONA, half of which seems to be underground.
So we delved into our journals and diaries from yesteryear. Oh dear, oh dear. Did I really write that?

 This market was to be the last one, and I was bowled over by the variety of stalls,  the quality of goods, stalls such as "Conversations on Death And Dying", the taiko drummers who performed in the plaza...inside this pink Mickey  Mouse somebody was offering Japanese tea ceremony. Naturally I  wanted to partake. It was superb, and the first tea ceremony I have ever done.

 Paige Turner ( Rachel) and her friend Miss Wimple ran a "Recylclibrary", where people could simply take any book that was on offer. They are asked to donate books too, either to the Recyclibary when it pops up, or to Fullers Bookshop in Hobart. The patrons of this library were exceedingly pleased by the generosity of this arrangement!

Later on, we cringe poets and writers decided the moment had come for the full monty. We took to the stage, clutching our tattered old notebooks, pages spilling from overfull pages of ramblings. I am tempted to say that there is a catharsis for the audience at a Cringefest, where they are presented with the lurid, the hideous, the overblown emotions of the teenage writer....and they are reminded, "I too, once thought like that , and I'm awfully glad that I didn't write about it!"

  Above, Tasman's mother ( Tasman in the green t-shirt awaits his moment of humiliation) agonises over her housemates in her journal. I'm not sure what Paige Turner, in pink, shared with the audience but it was bound to be profound!
                                                                I really gave full vent to my criticisms of my siblings at age 13, and here the world at last is receiving a  poem about shoes written age 12! It was great fun, and the atmosphere of the market allowed for experiments like this to have an outing. Go MONA!!!