Kirsha Kaechele has put the Gold Coast on notice.
“The surf’s up and the patriarchy is down,” says the Tasmania-based artist who made international headlines after winning her bid in the state’s supreme court to continue barring men from her Ladies Lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona).
Now her performance art installation is heading north for Queensland’s Bleach* festival. Under the artistic direction of Doug Moran portrait prize winner and serial Archibald prize finalist Michael Zavros, the festival is bringing some of Mona’s signature irreverence and taste for the bizarre to the Gold Coast.
It’s Dark Mofo with a tan – after a few piña coladas.
“It’s the perfect macho setting for a little rebalancing,” says Kaechele, clearly delighted at her job creation scheme, a counterpart to the city’s longstanding female-only niche employment market, Metermaids.
At Mona, the only males permitted entry to the lounge were formally-clad butlers, supplying female patrons with champagne, hors d’oeuvres and massages.
Kaechele says she’s still finalising what the male employees in Queensland will be expected to wear.
“Probably not much. It’s the Gold Coast, you know, different climate.
“Yes, there will be lots of objectification going on, OK? It feels so nice to objectify men, it’s a real pleasure, for the women, and for the right man. I think there’s going to be a line of men around the gallery, trying to get into the butler training.”
Last year Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal ordered Mona to admit men to the female-only space, upholding a Sydney man’s complaint that the museum had discriminated against him on the basis of gender. Kaechele appealed to the supreme court, which found the Ladies Lounge was “an arrangement to promote equal opportunity by highlighting the lack of equal opportunity”.
After the win, Kaechele and her squad of female supporters threw a month-long party at Mona, Australia’s largest privately funded museum, owned by Kaechele’s husband, David Walsh.
“We spent a year’s budget in one month, on champagne and strippers [of both sexes] … it was really gorgeous, all these women from all different backgrounds, the full range of society, right-leaning and left-leaning, young and old, partying like crazy for a month. It was exquisite,” Kaechele says.
“We all got wild. I did a Formula One race car driving performance – you know, spraying champagne everywhere – and then we’re like, we don’t need to be sticky and uncomfortable, and then everyone was naked, everyone was dancing. It was a scene out of Elysian fields. It was like ancient Greece, with all of these goddesses just in the zone.”
Eight months on, the hangover has subsided, the emerald velvet chaise lounges and green silk drapes have been steamed clean and the Ladies Lounge is being packed into a shipping container – sans fake Picassos this time round.
“I’ve been on the hunt to find some really special pieces to keep it new and exciting,” Kaechele says.
In July, Mona admitted paintings by Pablo Picasso – which were moved to a female toilet cubicle to legally keep them just for female viewers – were fake. So what guarantees can she give that all works of art in the Gold Coast iteration of the Ladies Lounge will be authentic?
“You can trust me completely.”
Hmmm.
In what could be seen as a bid to head off any further legal challenges by disgruntled men denied entry to the installation, there will also be a companion piece to the Ladies Lounge at Bleach* by the New York multidisciplinary artist Tora López. The Complaints Department – marketed as “Severance meets customer service centre” – will invite members of the public to vent, provided they have “direct experience and knowledge of the issue they are complaining about”. No generalised whinges, no abstract issues.
Using the Gold Coast’s cultural hub Home of the Arts (Hota), Zavros will be delivering a more visual arts focused program than Bleach*’s previous iterations.
“I was brought up on the Gold Coast and a lot of my focus on the festival is looking back at my history growing up there, the changes I saw, from a sleepy surf town to a playground of the rich with Movie World,” he says.
“Today it’s a much more sophisticated place. I live in Brisbane but when I visit the Gold Coast I’m still amazed at its transformation.”
Patricia Piccinini’s beloved hot air balloon sculptures Skywhale and Skywhalepapa will open Bleach* at dawn on 31 July. The hot air may continue into the evening with the American pop culture artist Jeff Koons making an appearance, in conversation with the Vault editor-in-chief, Alison Kubler.
Zavros’s own work will be incorporated into the program, including Drowned Mercedes. The customised water-filled 1996 Mercedes-Benz SL, a commentary on consumerism and self-absorption, first showed at the artist’s 2023 solo retrospective at Brisbane’s Qagoma.
Zavros is also collaborating with The Farm director, Gavin Webber, on a new work called Cavalcade. Over two nights, a thought-to-be unprecedented fusion of opera and dressage will take place on Broadbeach’s Kurrawa beach, backed by a 24-piece orchestra.
Koons will not be installing any of his iconic oversized sculptures at Bleach* but the Gold Coast’s Emerald Lakes will be getting its very own lifesize replica of Michelangelo’s David, carved from the same Carrara marble as the original.
Zavros has made assurances David will be the only fake at Bleach*.
“I can tell you there will be no ‘Picassos’ in this build of the Ladies Lounge,” he says.
“I know there will be some exciting new works that Kirsha has acquired but I actually don’t know much about the physical works that are going in there, because I’m just a man.”
• Bleach* festival runs on the Gold Coast from 31 July to 10 August
