Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) and artist Kirsha Kaechele, who is married to Mona’s owner David Walsh, have won a court battle to reopen controversial art installation the Ladies Lounge.
Despite opening four years ago, the Ladies Lounge – a curtained off space in the gallery that only female-identifying people can enter – has been in the media spotlight ever since a visitor to the Hobart gallery filed a complaint for being refused entry. New South Wales man Jason Lau visited Mona in April 2023 and later lodged a complaint to Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, saying he had experienced gender discrimination.
Lau represented himself at a tribunal hearing in March, and in April the tribunal ordered Mona to either close the installation, reform it, or allow men to enter the space. Mona chose to close it.
Undeterred, Kaechele appealed to the Supreme Court of Tasmania. On Tuesday September 17, the artist led 70 women – all dressed in power suits and pearls – to the Supreme Court in Hobart saying, “We have seen an incredible show of solidarity from women everywhere. It is clear to me that the Ladies Lounge should be allowed to exist … This isn’t just about the Ladies Lounge, it is about the experience of women, the role of art in society and the law itself.”
Today, the Supreme Court has ruled that Mona can reopen its Ladies Lounge – and continue to refuse men entry to the space – without the gallery being in breach of anti-discrimination laws.
Excluding men from the Ladies Lounge was always the point of the artwork, as Kaechele has explained, as it acts as a mirror to the experience women face and have faced in society.
As part of the appeal, Mona’s counsel Catherine Scott put forward that the tribunal had failed to properly apply section 26 of Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act 1998, which allows discrimination on the grounds of promoting equal opportunity for a disadvantaged group of people.
“The Ladies Lounge can be seen as an arrangement to promote equal opportunity, which generally prevails in society, by providing women with a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged rather than disadvantaged by the refusal of entry to the Ladies Lounge by men,” said Acting Justice Shane Marshall, who overturned the April decision by the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Kaechele posted a jubilant response to the news on her Instagram account. She said she was “grateful to live in a democracy where opposing viewpoints can be exercised calmly in a court of law – many women (people) in the world are not so lucky” and she thanked Lau for “bringing the artwork to life”.
“I have enjoyed every minute of this process,” she wrote. “I look forward to the day we share bubbles together.”
She goes on to say the Ladies Lounge is a “uniting force” and that she “began as an artist, and landed a feminist”. Though she hopes this is the end to the legal proceedings, we hope it’s not the end of Kaechele’s time in the spotlight.
Article updated at 5pm on September 27 to include the artist’s response to the win.
