After winning the right to ban men, Mona’s Ladies Lounge is on the move
The artist behind Mona’s Ladies Lounge has announced the controversial space will be moved to a new location. “It will travel,” Kirsha Kaechele said in a statement to this masthead.
At present, the lounge is located in Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art, and for the past six months has been the subject of a fierce legal battle over men being excluded from the space.
Kirsha Kaechele, the artist behind the Ladies Lounge, at the Supreme Court in Hobart.Credit: Jesse Hunniford
Kaechele won her appeal to the Tasmania Supreme Court last month, which found excluding men from the space did not breach anti-discrimination law.
Mona had been initially ordered by the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to close the space in April following an anti-discrimination case filed by NSW man, Jason Lau.
Lau was represented pro bono in the Supreme Court by Greg Barns, who countered the museum’s claim that the space should be exempt from anti-discrimination laws by saying the lounge did not address any societal disadvantage experienced by women in any definitive or substantive way.
The Ladies Lounge contains various artworks and objects, including work by Sidney Nolan and pieces of jewellery, but creator of the space Kaechele has always viewed the space as an artwork in and of itself.
The Ladies Lounge at Mona.
“It is a living, evolving work of art, it may not live at Mona forever. It will travel. The Ladies Lounge could appear in any number of places – the Venice Biennale, the G5 summit, Davos. Anywhere women need a break from men, and anywhere men need the experience of being excluded,” Kaechele told this masthead.
Kaechele is firm in the idea that the Ladies Lounge will not be closed, only that “it’s closed to men. Forever”.
While Mona was initially instructed to allow men into the space, Kaechele took the case to the Supreme Court and, at the end of September, the original ruling was quashed, with the court finding that the museum was not in breach of anti-discrimination law.
The victory meant that the case was due to return to the tribunal.
Over the course of six months of legal battles, the Ladies Lounge has made headlines around the world. First, due to the theatrical nature of Kaechele’s defence, which involved the artist arriving at court flanked by women in matching suits, one of whom spent the proceedings reading feminist texts, then secondly by the revelation that the “Picassos” on display in the space were actually copies made by Kaechele herself.
Where the Ladies Lounge will be travelling to is yet to be announced, but Kaechele says that “first, a celebration is in order, we’ll have a month-long victory party [for women] in the Ladies Lounge at Mona. And a few special opportunities for men as well [laundry folding lessons etc]”.
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