Mona Foma festival has breathed its last breath

In a huge blow to Tasmania, Tasmanians and the Tasmanian tourism industry, the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) has made the decision to close its summer festival.

After 16 years, Mona Foma - Mona’s Festival of Music and Art - has unleashed its mayhem in lutruwita/Tasmania for the final time.

The news was revealed in a press release in which Mona owner and founder David Walsh made the following statement:

‘At Mona Foma -Mofo - at the Peacock Theatre, we joined the Zen Circus, and Italian punk came to live, rent free, in my head.

"In 2023 Peaches turned us all on with her sexy songs, but the thing that turned me on the most was the sign language interpreter signing ‘peg’.

"Guy Ben-Ary in 2017, wiring living neurons to speakers and cajoling them to scream. Gotye playing the ondioline. Robin Fox’s beacons. David Byrne and Philip Glass. Wire and Cale. The Saints and St. Vincent. Dresden Dolls and Dan Deacon. Sun Ra and Neneh Cherry. Kate Miller-Heidke and Vieux Farka Touré.

"And the finches playing guitar. From Here to Ear. That was the first one, in 2009. We bought that work, but we’ve never shown it again. It was too much the first time.

"Mona Foma took us around the world. But it ends here. Maybe the end started at Covid. Maybe it’s because the last festival was a poorly attended artistic triumph. But those aren’t the reasons I killed it.

"I know that we live for experience but, more and more, I seek permanence, a symbolic immortality. At Mona, I’m building this big thing, hopefully it’ll be a good thing, but it’s a costly thing. I’m addicted to building, and my addiction got out of hand. Some things have to go before I’m too far gone.

"Mona Foma is one of those things. It’s been magical, but the spell has worn off. Only these words, from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, remain: ‘Live by the Foma that makes you brave and kind and healthy and happy.’

"Gratitude to all of you that came. And to those who didn’t, a silver lining: you’ll no longer suffer from FOMO for FOMA. And anyway, repetition is regimentation. And regimentation is ridiculous.

"Greatest gratitude to those who helped put it together. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me."

Sad.

Are you ready for Tasmania's first queer woodchopping event?

David Walsh and his teams at MONA like to shock and surprise - and they have come up with perhaps Tasmania's most niche event for this year's Mona Foma festival.

Tourism Tasmania has partnered with Mona Foma to support an artistic event called The Tasmanian Queer Woodchop Championships, which aim to raise awareness of Tasmania as a holiday destination for LGBTQIA+ travellers.

The partnership coincides with Australia hosting the internationally renowned LGBTQIA+ festival WorldPride for the first time.

A marketing campaign for The Tasmanian Queer Woodchop Championships has been developed to target LGBTQIA+ audiences attending WorldPride in Sydney.

The free event will take place on the tennis court at MONA - just north of Hobart - at 3:30 pm on Friday, February 24.

Woodchopping is very popular in Tasmania and is a traditionally a high testosterone event.

The Mona Foma team say The Queer Woodchop is "where the classically male-dominated world of timbersports meets joyous queerness in an interactive spectacle of flying wood and fabulousness"

Guests are told to expect "Agfest meets nightclub and country-fair camp".

No tickets are required and the event will be followed by the Mona Sessions, where pop-provocateur Peaches will be performing The Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Show. Get tickets here.