The first impulse is to kick it. After all, it’s a sand sculpture. And as everyone who has grown up near a beach appreciates, if it’s made of sand, then it’s asking to be kicked. But for the wall-high protective glass, Mirrorscape, by the French artist Théo Mercier, may not have survived my visit to MONA.
On a low, curved stage sits a scene of mundane wreckage. Two utility vehicles serve as centrepieces. One is upturned, its front chassis exposed. It rests on the carcass of a two-seater lounge. A mattress is draped over the upper side of the wreck, a broken log, a signifier of the non-human world in this otherwise secular scene of anthropocentric waste, rests against the lower side.
