Thomas Hirschhorn's Tilting World-Gladstone Gallery

The entire gallery @ Gladstone is besieged by a topsy-turvy installation of a cruise ship turned over placing you into the havoc & aftermath of such a disaster.  Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you will recall the Costa Concordia Cruise Ship that ran aground.  The ship capsized, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves as the Captain abandoned ship. The disaster resulted in 32 casualties and the infamous (Italian) tapes of a coast guard officer yelling @ the Captain to return immediately to his ship and fulfil his obligations to his passengers & crew.  I experienced a sense of vertigo inside the gallery.  The exhibition simulates the inside of a ship turned unnaturally on its side and the horrific aftermath.  There are numerous, vivid orange life vests and an accummulation of flotsam and jetsam.  Nothing is as it should be, the piano, the garish furnishings, the staircase are nonsensical.  The Concordia disaster is an abusrd & heinous calamity; the result of so many incidents that just should not have occured.  As in the sinking of the Titantic , if only….  Hirshhorn compels you to feel burdened with the consequences of our behavior and confronts us with our own mortality.  This exhibit took my breath away.