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00:00Hello.
00:15Performance artist Kersha Keshele made headlines recently when one of her projects, The Ladies
00:22Lounge, faced an unsuccessful legal action for discrimination against men.
00:29There are many ways to describe Kersha. Bold, provocative, single-minded, unique. She's
00:35also known as the wife of David Walsh, the founder of Tasmania's acclaimed Museum of Old
00:40and New Art. But who is the real Kersha Keshele?
00:51I find myself in this role as Mrs Mona, or the First Lady of Mona, and very much as David
00:56Walsh's wife, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's definitely highly
01:05irritating and very anti-feminist, and I don't like it. But there's benefits too of having
01:12a powerful man in your life. I find I get away with more.
01:21Kersha's a lot of things. She's complicated and flawed, but she's always authentically
01:25herself. Beautiful form, beautiful place. Kersha is both a curator and a performance artist.
01:36She is creative without a boundary. Three, two, one. She just looks at the world through
01:43a different lens. She considers life as art. That the world and everything in it is a fascinating
01:51plaything. But Luz, I think I see an empty glass.
01:57Sometimes when you're at an artwork with her, you're never quite sure if it's an artwork,
02:01a protest, a fundraiser or a party, but it's usually all of them.
02:06The artist behind the Ladies' Lounge exhibition at Mona in Tasmania is being sued for gender
02:11discrimination. The Trendy Museum recently set up a women-only ladies'
02:16lounge, but a male patron became upset when he was denied entry.
02:21I want to ask the difficult questions, but I want to ask them playfully and lovingly. And
02:27I do want it to be fun because I think that makes it easier to investigate things and go into
02:33uncomfortable spaces. She dares to be feminine and sexual and to talk about those power dynamics.
02:43That's very confronting to us in all sorts of ways. It's confronting to men. It's confronting
02:48to the art world. We'll see how the men take it. The men
02:51are a little hysterical. But I have had to deal with these, yes, kind of serious art world critics
02:58who just tell me that I'm not an artist, I'm not relevant, and I'm not making art. So
03:03it's like, okay. But it gave me something to fight against and to prove. I had to work harder.
03:10So, oh yeah?
03:13Tonight, on Australian Story, we meet artist and curator, Kirsha Kekele.
03:32To get someone like Kirsha to talk about herself is an interesting challenge. Kirsha has a little
03:47bit of armour about herself, but also her life is her art. So be prepared for some surprises.
03:54Kirsha was loud when she should have been silent. And she was bold when she should have been meek. I'm not surprised she's an artist.
04:07She'll find some interesting ways to tell her own story that may not involve her normal clothes.
04:13This is her last reincarnation. And this lifetime is very special because this time she's married to David Welsh.
04:26I need a good name. Is Hans Richter a good name?
04:28Hans Richter died in the 1970s.
04:32Do you want to give me a kiss?
04:34No.
04:35I have wanted to kiss you for some time.
04:38I would have been 15 when you died.
04:40Please, sir, come. Come here.
04:47She is never not in role play or part of a broader artwork. She's kind of living the artwork.
04:54She was a strange girl. Hmm. From a different family. They were different. Hmm.
05:08Her actual personal story is pretty exotic itself. Born in America. Her dad is a scientist and her mum's an artist.
05:17By the time she was 17 months, I made Play-Doh and she sculpted every day from the time she was 17 months old.
05:27And then I did paintings of her every day. So she was totally immersed in art continuously.
05:35Our home was always an artwork. So it's no surprise that I do installation art. It completely comes from the insane and magical and very beautiful interiors that I grew up in.
05:50And then she moves to Guam when she's five, which is an incredibly remote island with a giant American military base in the Pacific Ocean.
06:02My father was super calm. He was a scientist, astrophysics. He worked at RAND Corporation in the think tank.
06:11They were the ones really strategizing and designing the technology to take over the world.
06:17On paper, you would think that my dad was in the CIA. You know, why were we in Guam? Really? Why were we in Guam? It was such a strange choice. But I really don't think he was.
06:33This is what it looks like on the island of Guam. It's very beautiful. She was in Guam from five years old to 17. Going to Guam is the best thing that ever could have happened to her.
06:50This was a totally different culture. There was a lot of suspicion towards white people, understandably.
07:00I had to adapt. I had to learn how to connect with people that saw me as different or saw me as an outsider.
07:07This is wonderful preparation for life. It allows her to have an insight, a real experience.
07:16It made her very brave and able to go out into the world in a very unique way.
07:31She lost her dad when she was 17 and she came to the United States and was on her own.
07:37The timing couldn't have been worse. He died and then she was getting on a plane two months later to go to college.
07:49Oh, Lloyd. Yeah, that was hard. I really loved my dad.
07:59All right. Yes, we are on Australian Story and I'm crying.
08:04Oh, God. Yeah.
08:08So, yeah, I lost my dad really early and I haven't even cried about him in forever.
08:14I think seeing someone you love die changes your perspective on your own life.
08:19I thought, this is it. We're only here for a short time. We have to live our dream.
08:26I was expecting her to become an architect and have a PhD.
08:31You know, I really expected to follow her dad's footsteps because she was a candidate for that.
08:38But she took off on these adventures.
08:42As soon as I left, it was just this explosive desire to see the world.
08:47And I met, you know, rune readers, diviners, you know, people were doing spiritual healings on me.
08:57And when it was time to go back to school, I decided not to. I decided to continue the experiment.
09:02You know, when we met, we just started travelling up the coast and we had a school bus.
09:10And we didn't have a plan. We just let spirit guide us.
09:14This is a little bit embarrassing.
09:19Because I do not operate this way now.
09:21But a psychic woman told me that I needed to go to New Orleans.
09:26So that's what happened.
09:29It took me no time to find where the artists live.
09:32I think I met KK in 2003.
09:38She had no money.
09:40And she was a working artist.
09:44She chose to make her home and to create her art project in a community within a very dangerous part of town.
09:55And get to know people as people and include them and bring them into the art world.
10:05I actually had aspirations to open a museum.
10:08And then Hurricane Katrina hit.
10:10And we lost the building as a result.
10:14And instead, I became occupied with my house and the houses on my street,
10:21which were now completely flooded and full of mud.
10:25And so I went out and got a house paint sprayer and tons of white paint.
10:31But we just decided to paint everything white.
10:33The house, the roof, the windows, the trees in front, the telephone pole.
10:38And this is now an art space.
10:41So then I invited an artist to come in and create a work.
10:44She started utilizing other derelict houses in that same block.
10:51And she was working with international artists who she would bring in.
10:56And each artist was sort of given their own house to make an art project with.
11:02I would say the work that's happened in this house has been about kind of coming to peace with return to the natural state of New Orleans.
11:11New Orleans.
11:13The art writers came out.
11:15Then suddenly there was a buzz and people were interested.
11:18Instead of an object sitting in a neighborhood as public art, the neighborhood became the public art.
11:29She's recreating the entire floor of the house.
11:31So it was a very rich experience that she created in this city, something that no one else had done to my knowledge previously.
11:42It was difficult for some people in the neighborhood.
11:46But she opened the door for her neighbors to participate.
11:51And there were some that wanted to and there may have been some who didn't want to.
11:55I think that New Orleans nurtured her soul in a way that she didn't expect it to.
12:06And she ended up starting a school in New Orleans called the Material Institute to give back to the people that gave to her.
12:14So there's that option.
12:17Or we can take one of these steps.
12:20She loves New Orleans.
12:22That's like a second home to her.
12:25Anyway, she went to an art festival in Switzerland and met David.
12:30And he had these thick glasses on.
12:36He looked extremely intelligent.
12:38And I was impressed.
12:40I was like, who are you?
12:42You are so fascinating.
12:43But then he got shy and left.
12:48But one of his friends did his work and came and invited me to dinner.
12:53And then that was that.
12:55She was smitten.
12:59You know, she had found somebody that was her intellectual equal.
13:04And that was rare for her.
13:08David's a Tassie boy from the northern suburbs.
13:12Didn't go to posh schools.
13:14He made his fortune by being a mathematician.
13:17Creating systems and processes that enable acquisition of wealth through gambling to begin with.
13:28And then through collecting artworks.
13:31And he's created Mona Museum in Tasmania.
13:35The Museum of Old and New Art was described by its founder, David Walsh, as a subversive adult Disneyland.
13:42I can only be with a very powerful man.
13:44I'm kind of not interested in the other ones.
13:48You know, I need a big strong man.
13:49I need a man who's a little more powerful than me.
13:52A little smarter.
13:54A little richer.
13:57The power differential serves us at home.
14:01Because I'm very traditional in a way.
14:03And I think I need that to feel feminine.
14:07Maybe that's really wrong, but it's how I feel.
14:09It comes as absolutely no surprise to me whatsoever that David will not be appearing in this show.
14:21He hates talking about himself.
14:24Television's not his bag.
14:26The menu is a full page, right?
14:29Menu.
14:30And then images.
14:32When she arrived in Australia, there was reporting early on that she'd been involved in an art project in New Orleans, which involved some sort of property which she had control over, over which some taxes were not paid.
14:44I inherited the penalties basically to the previous owner, but I had no means or intention of paying them. I just wanted to use the houses for art.
14:56She didn't really, perhaps, understand what needed to be done with her properties that she had in New Orleans and maybe didn't tend to them in the way that she could have or should have.
15:11And she got some slack.
15:12Smaller versions of the images and the names.
15:15Now I land in Tasmania and I have all of these people that I've never met just looking at me like David Walsh's, you know, dubious new tax dodger wife.
15:26That needs editing.
15:28And I was inexperienced, you know, with negative press.
15:31I just felt like my whole world was falling apart.
15:35It was terrible.
15:38We need to start chopping the vegetables first.
15:41So does everyone feel comfortable using knives?
15:43Yeah.
15:45We're in Material Institute in our new 24 karat garden cafe.
15:49It's just a learning space where kids cook and serve food.
15:55I was born out of my work in New Orleans.
15:57It was a big thing to move to Tasmania, but I was at a stage in my life where my priority was to build a family.
16:08I just really wanted to be a mother.
16:11Now I have a husband and a daughter and his daughters.
16:15I knew it would be an enormous sacrifice and would definitely interfere with my work.
16:21And it absolutely has.
16:23But I love it.
16:24It's good for us.
16:26It's good for David and I.
16:27We love her together.
16:28It's really beautiful.
16:30So what I want you to do is take your lavender flower and pop it into the water.
16:35I think that her becoming a mother has made her more grounded and more, dare I say, responsible.
16:45OK, ready?
16:47But actually more welcoming to the world because she's had to change her ways.
16:53That's so refreshing.
16:55You've got a microphone.
17:01For the past year I've been the artistic director of Bleach Festival on the Gold Coast.
17:05We invited Kisha to bring the Ladies' Lounge up to Queensland.
17:10The Gold Coast is a hotbed of masculinity and the beaches are full of raw muscle.
17:16And of course that makes the Ladies' Lounge more exciting.
17:18It's a big production.
17:21There were times when I did call her and say, look, we are so far over budget.
17:27Can we maybe do something else?
17:29And inevitably I put the phone down and I'd agree to more things.
17:32We're here today on behalf of all men to apologise for many centuries of pain, oppression and suffering.
17:41I'm definitely an aesthetic dictator.
17:45Absolutely.
17:47I know when it's right.
17:49There is an avenue for men to come in but they come in as a butler.
17:52I do probably count on my team.
17:56They could get burnt out.
17:57Because when I get into the zone with her work, I'm focused on it and I won't stop.
18:03And with the left arm, you're going to take the baby.
18:06But don't drop the baby.
18:08Kisha is just uncompromising.
18:10And it's very easy to call that person difficult to work with or a diva or whatever,
18:14but she is so singular in her focus and her vision for what she wants to deliver.
18:18Ladies, we have another graduate of the butler trading program.
18:23And that's what good work costs. It's hard.
18:25The ladies lounge originally came about at the end of COVID when Mona was reopening.
18:36Kersha was going to get some tremendous art, put it in a beautifully designed room into which no men would be allowed except for butlers who she said would do what they were told.
18:46For millennia, women have been excluded from spaces and women have been serving men.
18:53It's really healthy to just exercise the opposite, just as a new perspective.
19:00She wanted to get some Picassos in there and so she painted some Picassos herself.
19:07I was certain I would be discovered and I was excited about being splashed over across the front page, you know, scandal, art scandal.
19:16We even hung one of them upside down deliberately to, you know, be a tell.
19:21There were all of these clues around the place and it just took so long before something official happened.
19:27Hello, welcome to the ladies lounge.
19:32The ladies lounge was just running smoothly.
19:35It was just this nice quiet place for women to bond and men were being excluded daily and having their experiences around that.
19:43I think most men found it funny or interesting.
19:49One man came along and he was from Sydney and he filed his formal complaint.
19:56Jason Lau has taken the museum to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal alleging discrimination.
20:03So I was like, yes, yes, this is going to be so good for the art. I was so excited.
20:10I'm like, now the artwork is alive. Now it's happening.
20:15For Kirsha it was a real moment to be able to show the artwork for what it really is and what it stands for.
20:23The rejection of men is a very central and important part of the artwork.
20:28There was a cohort of Kirsha's friends and supporters.
20:31As we headed towards the courtroom, someone threw a strand of pearls around my necklace and we all had our navy suits on.
20:40The performative aspects of that court case, of walking that fine line between performance and contempt, caught the media's attention in Australia and worldwide.
20:50I asked my lawyer, I said, do you think you could try to lose? She said, no, absolutely not.
21:02And I was crossing my fingers, please let us lose, please let us lose.
21:06And then the ruling arrived and it was incredible. It was a dream.
21:13The tribunal has found the ladies lounge discriminatory and has ordered Mona to allow men entry within 28 days.
21:20She spun it into her web of performance and it became art. It became theatre.
21:27They say that the artwork has to be reformed, but I fear it's beyond reform. I don't.
21:34Peter?
21:35Her response was fairly typical of Kirsha. She picked up the best of the art and stuck it in the women's toilets.
21:45And then attention was drawn to the fact that there were also fake Picassos in there.
21:51Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art has admitted displaying three fake Picasso paintings for more than three years.
21:58And so now my husband, he's taking all of this heat and they're like, why is Mona showing fake art?
22:07They're going to lose all credibility.
22:10I think she's the nightmare of the art world. No one takes her very seriously.
22:18She's a Froot Lobe. She's a Coco.
22:21The women fighting to exclude men from a lounge at Hobart's Mona Museum have had a legal victory today.
22:31A Supreme Court judge has ruled the so-called ladies lounge can lawfully refuse to admit men.
22:38The verdict demonstrates a simple truth. Women are better than men.
22:44The ladies lounge in the court case really transformed Kirsha's profile.
22:48She is famous now because of her work, not because she's Mrs. Walsh.
22:53They're Picasso.
22:55Yes. Yes, they are.
22:57Can I see the Picasso again?
22:59Only if you clean it.
23:01I'm really interested in the ladies lounge now, in its next stage.
23:06My artist's ego wants to be invited to the Venice Biennale.
23:10I don't want to break my way in, like always.
23:13It holds a lot of promise.
23:16I think the ladies lounge could actually be a type of embassy.
23:20A space for women to work on things like international peace accords.
23:28I think she's very aware of the power of art and her performance and her ability to break a stalemate.
23:35I'm fascinated by disputes and I'm fascinated by the possibility of what people can find that they have in common and ways in which they can move forward past entrenched positions.
23:50When she first mentioned that she wanted to do the Forest Economic Congress with greenies and loggers, I was actually surprised.
24:04I thought it was pretty bold.
24:05A huge range of people have been invited, not just environmentalists and people in the industry.
24:13It was scientists, it was ecologists, people who look into forestry finance and economics.
24:19I believe we need to actually just invite our opponents to literally to our parties.
24:25We should get smashed with someone who doesn't agree with us so we can actually hash it out.
24:30I don't think people from the mainland understand just how contentious forestry is in Tasmania.
24:37There are people who came together at Mona who have only ever seen each other across picket lines or across lines in the forest.
24:49I had a slight fear that we were going to be a performer in some grand performance art piece.
24:55And it might be this huge big ha ha gotcha sort of thing.
25:00What is the value of a tree?
25:01And more, moreover, what is the value of nature?
25:05There was definitely some hostility and apprehension from a lot of people because this was very new.
25:10A lot of people have been playing this game, for want of a better term, in their silos for a long time.
25:17We're here to listen and to connect as people beyond our personal ideologies.
25:21I am not fearless. I am often completely terrified.
25:27But there is a part of me that is enjoying it and really takes delight in the situation as it unfolds, even the hard parts.
25:40Mona is a wicked place to hold an event like that because it completely disarms everybody.
25:45It was like an emotional rollercoaster for three days.
25:50Big feelings and then some weird art, you know, and then more big discussions and some weird art.
25:57I don't know why tequila diplomacy is so effective.
26:03By the final night, late in the morning, when the really radical performances were happening, they may have already had a shot of tequila or at least some champagne.
26:13And yeah, the walls really came down.
26:19It was really easy to then take the next step and say, let's all meet in a smaller group now and discuss this specific issue.
26:27Was it a success? I don't know if it achieved significant long term goals.
26:32It did facilitate a lot of discussion between people who have never spoken with each other before.
26:36I think there were some people that thought it was a bit of a greenwash.
26:42Some of the conservationists feel they're not being engaged since the Congress.
26:47I think there needs to be that dialogue with both sides and continue to have those sides talking.
26:55Some people are afraid that I am too close to the loggers and some environmentalists have told me, you know,
27:00I just see you buying them drinks. Like, well, everyone lobbies in their own way.
27:06It's very difficult to compete in the Australian market.
27:09And I think that because I do, I'm able to actually have hard conversations and say,
27:14what does stand between us and best practice? You know, what is, what can change?
27:20Kershaw started talking about this sit-in that she wanted to do on the beach, women nude or topless, some months ago.
27:33I was, I was a bit worried when she first described it, I thought, oh, I might get into trouble.
27:37What are the regulations around this?
27:40But as always with Kershaw, she just figures it all out and it's all fine.
27:44I'm the descendant of Germans who have absolutely no issues with nudity.
27:52And so I'm always taken aback when I enter a culture that has shame around the body.
28:01Someone said to me that in the Gold Coast, the women in the 70s and 80s used to really go topless.
28:08And I thought, well, here I am on the Gold Coast, we really need to bring this back.
28:11If there is an issue and the police do come up, I think that will spark a really interesting conversation.
28:18I don't know, I'm getting older. I think there's less and less opportunities to do something a bit wild like this.
28:30It just was joyful, actually.
28:33You feel shy and then the inhibitions just drop away.
28:36I suppose with Kershaw, the dance between the serious and the frivolous is a bit of a tightrope, that one.
28:48It'll be interesting to see how she balances those two things, because something can be both.
28:53It's not easy to embrace what Kershaw does, but I think if she continues to develop the ideas that she is working with, there will be a time when the art world, so to speak, sees how important it is what she is doing.
29:15I think she brings people into it, which brings a whole new dynamic to art.
29:22Art should be lived and it should be something that is experiential.
29:26Bring your body to the event, bring your whole self.
29:28And also really challenges what our idea of art is.
29:30I myself am baffled, you know, a good portion of the time where I'm like, is this art? You know, does this count for art?
29:41But it does tend to come around and I realize, yes, this is art.
29:45I make life art.
29:46Walking with all of those women on the beach, this feeling that it's just us, it's our space.
29:57It just took on this quality of a ritual and it was so transcended and beautiful.
30:04I just felt like, yes, this is, this is the power of art.
30:08It's the power of art.
30:18We sang...
30:22Which is...
30:25This one's gonna get me, okay?
30:28Maybe everyone go, just, you go away, Marissa.
30:33Ave...
30:36I saw your head face!
30:39Ave Maria...
30:48Oh, thank you. It's been such a pleasure to be on your show.
30:54I am so excited to watch it.
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