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Thread: Australias oldest lunatic asylum
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11th July 2016, 05:17 PM #16
People didn't have to do much to end up in these sort of institutions.
Some of the things used as treatments were also the same methods used to torture/interrogate people some worse. It makes you wonder.…..Live a Quiet Life & Work with your Hands
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11th July 2016, 05:32 PM #17GOLD MEMBER
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some of those reasons are real eyebrow raisers.
"laziness", "female disease", "imaginary female trouble", but the one I LOL'ed at was "kicked in the head by a horse"
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11th July 2016, 06:18 PM #18GOLD MEMBER
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There is actually a concerted push on at the moment to get Heritage listing on the place.
As for the particular type of art on display........
The art on display was of the "Performance Art" genre by a very famous Australian performance artist by the name of Mike Parr. He sat in one of the rooms for 3 days non stop and just drew and painted continuously. People who visited the show could peer in through a small window and watch him draw (there was more to it in the end but I think you had to be there). Meanwhile there was a kind of retrospective exhibition of the artists past performance works televised on various screens through out the buildings. His performances can be quite confronting for example in one of them he gets his face sewn up into a really grotesque contorted ...well, face. In another one he has a length of dynamite cord or the like wrapped round and round his leg and then lights the cord so you can see it burn round and round his leg. The exhibition also used sound in a most unsettling way. Although I went twice both times were in the daytime however it was open all night too and I believe the night time show goers were treated to even more sounds. Smell was also used to unsettle viewers. I have a pretty strong constitution when it comes to smells (like a tannery worker etc) and found myself laughing out loud at some peoples reactions to the planted smells. Not sure the aim of the show was to provoke a sense of happiness. I do not think that is the aim of art these days .
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13th September 2016, 10:39 AM #19
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14th September 2016, 08:42 AM #20
Good set of photos. They do make you sit up and think.
I think know why they closed there doors, I think it was due to the expected over population of the facilities. I come to this conclusion because laziness was one reason listed for admission.Cheers Rum Pig
It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
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14th September 2016, 08:42 PM #21GOLD MEMBER
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That list of reasons were not actually anything to do with this particular asylum. They probably DID have their own list of qualifying reasons however I do not claim to know what they were. Perhaps they were more ridiculous?
I have just finished reading a book called "The wicked boy" that is about a young lad who murdered his mother in the late 1800's and ended up in an asylum called Broadmoor in England for a lengthy stay (maybe 16 years or so). What struck me about Broadmoor at the turn of the last century was how gently and nicely they treated the patients on the whole and encouraged them to be eventually able to fit back into society. Of course there were certain wards in the asylum where really nasty people were sent who would not have received such lenient conditions. I guess the pictures I posted are of a similar less lenient section of Willow Court. However Willow court was a big institution and some inmates were permitted to go out and mingle with the general population of New Norfolk if they chose to.
The art show that was on at Willow Court (when these pics were posted) was obviously meant to shock to some extent, which seems to be the norm in modern art.
Last week I had an hour to kill in downtown Hobart and decided to just sit in the main mall and watch people. I know it might sound strange but I am a bit of a hermit who lives in the bush and I don't really see many people during the course of a week, so it sounded like an interesting thing to do.. It did not take too long to see folk hanging around the mall who would have been housed at Willow Court if it had still been operating. I wondered where these poor folk might have been sleeping for the night or what they might be eating, or if they wished Willow court was still operating. Asylums may be scary if you go by movies like "one flew over the cuckos nest" but there surely is a more compassionate reason for them.
Perhaps I got caught up in the shock factor of modern art when I originally posted the pics.
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16th September 2016, 12:53 PM #22Senior Member
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From the title of the thread I was expecting photos of parliament!
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