Art for art’s sake – in a wacky world

It’s said if something is no good for anything else then it must be art, which may make the work pictured at right one of the most artful objects in the world.

It’s also in a flash gallery, so I guess that makes its status official.

The whānau were in Hobart, artfully (see what I did there?) avoiding a cyclone as it tore the leaves from our poor, rat-gnawed pukka back in Auckland.

We’d ferried to MONA (Museum of Old and New Art), the city’s eccentrically cool, and mostly underground art gallery-turned-maze. It isn’t supposed to be a maze, but after an hour of meandering we did feel as if we were trapped in a spiralling MC Escher image.

Our aimless wander eventually delivered us to this contraption which the gallery app helpfully described as a “defecation machine”.

Further, it told us it was soon to be fed at one end, with the food then percolating its way along the chain of stomachs until, at another set time, it deposits a wee poo on a metal plate. Charming.

The ideal conversation starter, and by all accounts with a particularly on point “nose”, but we weren’t waiting around to see if today’s meal was a chilli-infested vindaloo.

I remain convinced it’s a pun. As in “You call that art? It’s sh*t.”

But if it is a pun, which is good for a punchline at least, is it still art?