Moorilla Museum of Antiquities

“The Moorilla Museum of Antiquities was an attempt to reformat a whimsy as an indulgence. By the time I acquired the Moorilla winery the nucleus of my collecting philosophy had already appeared. Succinctly put: that art should not just have aesthetic value but should have something to say about its own genesis. More particularly the two fundamental reasons for the creation of art (as exemplified in antiquities) are accessing sex and averting death. Satiation and propitiation was, before the west's inventing of art for art sake, all there was.

Through the transition to collecting western art (but still antiquities also) these themes remain paramount, both in my motives for collecting art and, I believe, in the purpose for its creation, although this purpose is partially concealed by the cultural paraphernalia accruing around it. Thus Mona expresses much of the same philosophy as the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities but uses a different allegory. Even those that ridicule the theoretical underpinnings and abhor the capriciousness of the new venture may glory in its physical manifestation just as I do the by-product beauty of the architecture of the catholic church.”

David Walsh, August 2007