If there was a festival which spoke to the spirits of deep winter, which embraced the darkness of the winter solstice – and instead of casting out the demons, welcomed them in, offered them a drink and partied into the night together – it would be Tasmania’s cultish cold-weather celebration, Dark Mofo. For those in the know, Dark Mofo is a must; for once you are inducted into the aforementioned cult, you will probably return again, year after year.
Kicking off in 2013 as the winter counterpart for Mona Foma – the summer edition held on the Mona (Museum of Old and New Art) grounds – it has steadily garnered a dedicated audience and plenty of controversy over the years for its willingness to push the boundaries (and occasionally obliterate them), until we were abruptly met with former Artistic Director Leigh Carmichael’s departure in 2023.
Dark Mofo took a year off in 2024, following the appointment of a new Artistic Director in what the Dark Mofo PR told me was “a fallow year… to deeply consider the future of the festival.” It returned to Hobart in 2025 with what newly appointed Artistic Director Chris Twite described as “charged around big ideas” for a curious audience “open to having these dialogues.”
“It’s a space where [artists] can talk about big ideas,” Twite said. “We’re not shying away from large concepts, we’re talking about the things that shape our individual and community lives every day. And I think there’s less and less opportunities to really stop and examine what that means for our future and our understanding of the past.”
From large concepts to large art, perhaps the most photographed moment of the festival was the towering, shiny white sculpture ‘Chocolate Goblin’ by Travis Ficarra, a pregnant, naked goblin facing a wall-sized video of artist Karina Utomo’s guttural vocalisations and heavy metal gesturing.
Then there were the artworks that deeply imprinted, perhaps none more so than Havana-born, US artist Carlos Martiel and his performance of ‘Custody’ – during which he sat naked in a barred cage, under a cube of sand, waiting to be consumed by the slowly encompassing mass around him – as well as ‘We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep’ by multidisciplinary Trawlwoolway artist Nathan Maynard.
The latter was as visually shocking as it was emotionally, the aromatics of hundreds of preserved jars of sheep heads punching through the air of the underground installation and filling your nostrils with its dark message – the preservation of gory parts as a reminder of the Cape Grim Massacre.
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Image: ‘SORA’ Credit: DarkLab Media
DIIV opened the music program of weekend two at the Odeon in fine Dark Mofo fashion – a set during which their faux political ‘ads’ saw them chanting “death to America”, and emblazoned the back of the stage with the words “America is the great Satan”. It was exactly the kind of political, occasionally subversive fusion between music and video art that we’ve come to know and love at the dark winter festival.
The Horrors followed with a strong set that took three or four songs to kick into gear, though it was hard to see the band through the excessive stage smoke; I could barely see much, despite being stationed in the front row of the surprisingly polite crowd. The Peep Tempel closed off the weekend with a punky Sunday night set that saw the old Melbourne guard come out in support of the post-punk rockers.
There were some choices that didn’t quite deliver as expected; Alabaster DePlume’s at-times rambling saxophone and poetry-infused set was as kooky as it was funky, and the highly billed Crime & the City Solution were met with a small, unsure crowd who seemed unimpressed by their placement of Berlin-era violinist, Bronwyn Adams, into the vocal mix. A symphony of abstract natural soundscapes by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, led by Co-Artistic Director and Conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra, Robert Ames, was interesting and masterful, but left me wondering if it was quite right for such a subversive festival lineup.
There were the usual Dark Mofo classics, like the Winter Feast, the Ogoh-Ogoh parade and ritual burning, and a somewhat subdued version of Dark Park. Night Mass – a block of the city overtaken by performance art, a pornographic lounge, scattered band sets, random artworks, and a belligerent puppet duo of a nun and a priest haranguing various bar patrons – was as fun as ever, a delicious mess of a party that started with a rave inside an abandoned department store and ended with a spin down a slide covered in fresh, squelchy tomato juice. (An art installation was to be blamed for many a ruined outfit that night.)
Mona’s fascinating art collection, of course, sits at the centre of Dark Mofo’s multiple artistic drawcards, this year delivering ‘in the end, the beginning’ by Italian sculptor Arcangelo Sassolino – a deeply moving representation of change in flux. Two huge wheels oozing in wet paint spun, as drips continually threatened to fall on the dark floor; a series of brilliant sparks fell from the ceiling in a long, dark room in a syncopated dance of explosive light; a pile of short, thick wooden beams splintered by force grew in the background as yet another was submitted to a pressurised vice. If you timed it perfectly, you’d hear the resounding crack as it succumbed to the mechanical force.
Image: ‘Coffin Rides’ Credit: DarkLab Media
Perhaps this is a metaphor for the quality of your Dark Mofo experience – it’s really all about timing. If you time it perfectly, you’ll discover an awesome new band wandering the interconnected warehouse spaces of Night Mass; you’ll arrive at a hidden art exhibition just as the line starts to dissipate; you’ll nab the famous whole charred squid before it sells out at the Winter Feast; and maybe, if you’re really brave, you’ll drop your jocks and embrace a nude solstice swim with a hundred of your new best friends. But if you’re unlucky, you’ll head over to Dark Park on the last night, only to be told that everything but one artwork has been shut down, despite it being listed as open on the schedule… well, at least we saw the warehouse-sized undulating, unsettling kinetic light sculpture ‘SORA’, by Nonotak, I guess.
When I spoke to Twite, he was on his way to take part in Simon Zoric’s ‘Coffin Rides’ – what I can only assume was an interactive metaphor of transition, passage, and rebirth. Are you seeing the theme here yet? Sassolino’s violent renewal; Twite’s coffin ride; a metaphor within a metaphor. A new Artistic Director transitioning a cult festival into a new era – perhaps a little more commercial, perhaps still finding its feet. But, in the end, how can you deliver your own version of a much-loved festival without inevitably disappointing someone?
Yes, Twite’s rebirth here – via a coffin ride – seems apt. A year to think about it, a year to do. Finding one’s feet is a process that will take time. As Twite says himself, “it’s a big question.”
“Because of what we have built, we can continue to evolve that – and remain relevant and interesting for people. I think these topics we’re exploring, they don’t get any less complicated, they don’t get any less intense. These questions about life and death, and the way that we live in the community – there’s so much more that can be explored each year. So we continue to do that work.”
One thing’s for sure, Dark Mofo is in confident hands.
