Nicole Durling and Olivier Varenne talk art, evolutionary biology, the O device and navigating MONA in search of The Red Queen.
They don’t want to make big claims but the co-curators of The Red Queen think MONA’s new exhibition may be the first ever anywhere to make its theme the question, why do we make art? ‘There have been [related] exhibitions at the British Museum and so on, but we are pretty much the first to do it with contemporary artists and commissioning works around the theme. When we spoke to a few curators they were quite impressed by the idea,’ says Olivier Varenne, who is not expecting any answers but is happy to ‘open the conversation. It’s an open-minded exhibition bringing the visitors into a new world and a new set of questions without trying to force them into any one way of thinking.’ For Nicole Durling, ‘instead of continuing along exploring a whole bunch of isms in art historical tropes, over the past two years since we’ve been open it seems these are more the questions that interest us.’
