‘We’re dealing with spiritual forces here’: Tasmania’s Christian community flips over art museum Mona’s inverted crosses but founder cares not
The annual Dark Mofo public event features red crucifixes on Hobar’s waterfront, triggering fears that organisers were ‘inviting in the devil’
The Mona founder David Walsh has shrugged his shoulders at the controversy stirred up, in entirely predictable fashion, by the erection of enormous, neon red inverted crucifixes on Hobart’s waterfront as part of Mona’s midwinter music and arts festival, Dark Mofo.
Walsh responded to the assertion from some members of Hobart’s Christian community that the crucifixes were “highly offensive” by saying: “I’d say about 50 things. But why are they upside down? Firstly, St Peter was crucified upside down. Why? Because he didn’t want to be like Jesus. So maybe all the churches that have up the right way crosses are blasphemers.”
His comments echoed the perspective expressed on Friday morning on ABC radio by Dark Mofo’s creative director, Leigh Carmichael, who said provocation was “part of Mona’s DNA” and argued that while “the cross is deeply significant in our historical context … symbols don’t have an inherent meaning. The meaning comes from what we bring to them.”
The controversy was fuelled this week by comments from Mark Brown, the Tasmanian director for the Australian Christian Lobby, who suggested Dark Mofo was inviting in the devil with the crosses. “We’re dealing with spiritual forces here. I don’t think those involved with this event, David Walsh and Leigh Carmichael, would disagree with the spiritual realm being a real thing,” he said.
On Friday, The Mercury newspaper published letters to the editor complaining about the crosses. One said it was a “shameful” use of public space, while another, from Reverend Matt Garvin of the Citywide Baptist Church, said that while the inverted cross was “commonly thought to be a satanic symbol”, churches should “engage with the conversation that David Walsh has created in our city”.
“Alternatively,” said Walsh, “it’s reasonable to contend that we are at the other side of the earth than Jerusalem, so if you map them, we’re actually the same way up.”