Take a ride in a coffin, take the knee in a gallery and “scream until you can’t breathe” in a work its creator, Nicholas Galanin (a multidisciplinary, First Nations Canadian artist and musician of Tlingit and Unangax̂ descent), describes as “a new American national anthem”, and hold your breath as Brazilian artist Paula Garcia and a stunt driver veer closer and closer to one another’s cars over two hours in the festival exclusive Crash Body, which culminates in a head-on collision between the two vehicles.
These and other events – some of them, especially in the visual arts program, free or low cost – are among the many highlights of Lutruwita/Tasmania’s revivified Dark Mofo 2025, the program for which dropped today (Friday 4 April).
“Dark Mofo is back! 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,” says Artistic Director Chris Twite, who took over the reins of Dark Mofo in 2023.
“It feels incredible to bring so many boundary pushing artists to Tasmania in 2025 for the full-scale return of Dark Mofo,” adds Twite, whose first festival was planned for 2024. Instead, in September 2023, Dark Mofo paused “for a period of renewal”, citing “changing conditions and rising costs“.
Subsequently, a significantly stripped-back program was presented in 2024, including the Winter Solstice Swim and the celebration of local produce, Dark Feast.
This year Dark Mofo returns in full, bolstered by renewed support from the Tasmanian Government – with both Guardian Australia and The Canberra Times citing a figure of $7 million a year for three years, securing Dark Mofo’s future until at least 2027.
The state’s Minister for Sports and Events, Nick Duigan, said in a media statement this morning that the festival is a significant driver of interstate tourism during Tasmania’s off-season.
“From 2013 to 2023, Dark Mofo attracted more than 300,000 unique visitors to Tasmania,” Duigan said.
“It also delivers a strong return on investment to the state, of approximately 5:1, significantly boosting the tourism and the hospitality sectors in the quieter winter months.
“That’s why the Tasmanian Government has secured this iconic event until 2027 as part of our 2030 Strong Plan for Tasmania’s Future,” the Minister said.
He added: “This is just one part of our Government’s commitment to Tasmania’s events sector to support their ongoing success.”
Speaking of Dark Mofo specifically, Duigan continued: “The 2025 iteration of the festival will feature all the usual festival favourites, such as the Winter Feast, Night Mass and the Nude Solstice Swim.
“I am particularly excited for the events in Launceston’s Princess Theatre and Ulverstone’s Planetarium as the festival spreads its wings across Tasmania.
“From arts, performances, music, food and rituals, there is something in this event for everyone,” the Minister concluded.
Dark Mofo 2025 highlights
The 2025 program includes a number of Tasmanian exclusives, including music from UK garage/gothic band The Horrors, art-punk progenitors Crime and the City Solution (Australia/Germany) and several shows at Borderlands, a celebration of experimental ambience at the Odeon Theatre, including the first live performance of ‘Under In Between’, a new collaboration between Lisa Gerrard (founding member of Dead Can Dance and now an in-demand film composer), Cye Wood and William Barton.
The aforementioned Crash Body is also a Dark Mofo exclusive (festival-goers can encounter the aftermath of its culminating collision at Dark Park), as is the previously announced We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep, a new commission by multidisciplinary Trawlwoolway artist Nathan Maynard (who recently won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama with his acclaimed football-meets-racism play, 37); Havana-born, US-based artist Carlos Martiel’s new commission, Custody, in which he’s imprisoned inside a large hourglass as rising sands threaten to crush his naked and restrained body – a commentary on systemic violence against people of colour the world over; and the aforementioned Nicholas Galanin’s Neon Anthem
Martiel will present a second work at Dark Mofo 2025, the video piece Cuerpo, in which the artist is suspended by a noose, as individuals take turns holding him up to prevent his asphyxiation.
Also sure to draw in visitors from interstate – and probably overseas – is a performance by Beth Gibbons of Portishead fame, emerging from a 16-year silence with her reflective solo debut at the Odeon (5 June); a series of exhibitions at Mona, including a new body of work by Italian sculptor Arcangelo Sassolino, in the end, the beginning, which sees the artist play with fire (and other things) as he seeks to grab matter by the neck, manipulate it, make drama and inspire renewal; Australian artist Travis Ficarra’s Chocolate Goblin, an avatar made flesh: a naked, pregnant form that makes its home at the edge of desire and disgust in a deconsecrated church; and, in another Dark Mofo exclusive, Aotearoa New Zealand artist Ronnie van Hout’s divisive Quasi – a monstrous fusion of the artist’s face in a giant sculpture of his hand – which divided audiences in Christchurch and Wellington, and which will appear in Hobart atop a waterfront building.
Other highlights include the return of interactive art playground Dark Park (5-8 and 12-15 June), at Macquarie Point (earmarked as the site for Hobart’s contentious 23,000-seat football stadium) and the resurrected Dark Mofo Films program.
One of the final events in the festival program is the popular and cathartic burning of the Ogoh-Ogoh (a totem-like sculpture derived from a Balinese Hindu purification ritual, which for 2025 is being crafted by Balinese artists), this year taking on the form of a giant Maugean skate – an endangered species found only in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour, close to where salmon are farmed and a flash point for tensions between environmentalists and governments, including the Greens and the Albanese Government.
Dark Mofo runs from 5-15 June in Hobart, with the Nude Solstice Swim on Saturday 21 June, the shortest day of the year. The Festival’s excursion to Ulverstone Planetarium takes place over 5-8 and 10-15 June; its Launceston leg, at the Princess Theatre, is on 11-12 June 2025.
