Dark Mofo returns. . . With a 2025 programme of ambitious art, performance, live music, and more.
The midwinter festival will showcase large-scale public artworks in the Dark Park art hub and across Hobart, as well as annual rites like the sprawling Night Mass parties, Winter Feast, the Ogoh-Ogoh burning, and the Nude Solstice Swim.
Plus, Dark Mofo Films makes a comeback.
“Dark Mofo is back!” New Artistic Director Chris Twite says. “Once again we will bathe the city in red, filling it with art and taking over disused and hidden spaces all across Nipaluna/Hobart. Night Mass – the late-night labyrinth of revelry – will carve new paths through the city and a host of Australian-exclusive artists from around the world will storm our stages.”
The festival will not only take over locations in Hobart, but also stretch its tentacles to Launceston, and Ulverstone.
“It feels incredible to bring so many boundary pushing artists to Tasmania in 2025 for the full-scale return of Dark Mofo.”
Winter Feast
In the realms of art and performance, We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep is a new commission from artist Nathan Maynard. It uses flesh to lay bare the legacy of cultural theft and erasure at staggering scale. Then there’s Crash Body, where two cars will engage in an exchange of near misses, building to a visceral head-on collision between artist Paula Garcia and a stunt driver.
Ida Sophia’s Witness is a video where the artist submits to a relentless baptism – to near drowning – shaped by a childhood jealousy of her father’s religious devotion.
Simon Zurich’s Coffin Rides will take you on a trip to the afterlife, and visitors can take a knee – making space for mourning, protest and catharsis – in Neon Anthem by Nicholas Galanin.
North Hobart State Cinema will host the return of Dark Mofo Films, with a programme of 11 films. Week one audiences can expect Darius Marder’s ‘Sound Of Metal’, David Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’, Mike Cheslik’s ‘Hundreds Of Beavers’, and ‘The Most Australian Band Ever!’ by Jonathan Sequeira + The Hard Ons . Next, in week two, will be John Hillcoat’s ‘The Proposition’, Neil Armfield’s ‘Candy’, Ana Lily Amirpour’s ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’, ‘The Lighthouse’ by Robert Eggers, ‘Wake In Fright’ by Ted Kotcheff, ‘Bad Boy Bubby’ by Rolf de Here and Lars von Trier’s ‘Melancholia’.
Tierra Whack
Opening up the music programme this year is Beth Gibbons at The Odeon. Then there’s Philly wordsmith Tierra Whack, experimental electronic musician Rival Consoles, and Cold Cave and Boy Harsher from the US.
Co-Artistic Director and Conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra, Robert Ames curates a symphony of abstract waterscapes, performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
Plus, the noisy and hypnotic Gut Health present dance-funk, and post-punk rockers The Peep Tempel break a long hiatus.
As usual, there are a selection of rituals at Dark Mofo. The Winter Feast will warm and brighten the darkest nights, Night Mass: God Complex will present a shapeshifting party, the Ogoh-Ogoh ritual solicits fears to feed a giant Maugean skate, and revellers will join a procession for the totem’s fiery sacrifice. . . And the Nude Solstice Swim returns to Long Beach in Sandy Bay.
Heading north, Matthew Ethel brings jangly dream pop excess to Launceston’s Princess Theatre, where Gamilaraay singer-songwriter Thelma Plum paints in shades of raw tenderness and hard-hitting rage. . . Plus, beneath the Planetarium dome of The Hive in Ulverstone, Jess Johnson and Simon Ward present ‘XYZZY’.
Check out the full programme.
Dark Mofo 2025 is on in Tasmania from 5-21 June.
