From car crashes to artworks, performances to food and wine, Tasmania's favourite winter festival Dark Mofo returns from June 5-15 and 21.
Organisers today announced an ambitious program designed to entertain locals and bring tourists to the island state during its coldest month.
The mid-winter festival will showcase large-scale public artworks in the Dark Park art hub and across Nipaluna/Hobart, along with annual rites such as the sprawling Night Mass parties, the Winter Feast gourmet festival, the traditional Ogoh-Ogoh burning, and the Nude Solstice Swim.
Dark Mofo Films also make a comeback under new artistic director Chris Twite.
"Once again we will bathe the city in red, filling it with art and taking over disused and hidden spaces all across Nipaluna/Hobart," Twite says.
"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 utilise deconsecrated churches, rooftops, basements, bars, bank vaults and the shores of River Derwent. Dark Mofo will also stretch its tentacles to a theatre in Launceston and the planetarium in Ulverstone.
"It feels incredible to bring so many boundary pushing artists to Tasmania in 2025 for the full-scale return of Dark Mofo," says Twite.
The festival features new artwork commissions from Paula Garcia and Carlos Martiel, the Australian premiere of a massive light installation from Nonotak and performances from the likes of The Horrors, Tierra Whack, Beth Gibbons and Crime and the City Solution.
In Crash Body (above), two cars will engage in an exchange of near misses, building to a visceral head-on collision between Brazilian artist Paula Garcia and a stunt driver. This event will unfold at the Regatta Grounds over two hours and festival-goers will encounter the aftermath at Dark Park.
SORA by Nonotak will create a dancing, hypnotic firmament inside a cavernous warehouse. Lights on kinetic armatures will spin and pulse at the whim of an invisible wind at times and raging like the apotheosis of an electrical storm at others.
In a brand new Mona exhibition, in the end, the beginning, Italian sculptor Arcangelo Sassolino plays with fire.
The Winter Feast will take over Princes Wharf and Salamanca Lawns throughout the festival. This year the Feast welcomes guest chef Niyati Rao from Mumbai restaurant Ekaa.
She will be teaming up with Chef Craig Will and fellow co-owners of Launceston’s Stillwater, Bianca and James Welsh.
This year’s Ogoh-Ogoh ritual solicits fears to feed a giant Maugean skate - an endangered species found only in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour and threatened by polluting fish farms.
Tickets are now on sale. Subscribe for updates at www.darkmofo.net.au.
Accor has four hotels in Hobart and five hotels in Launceston, including brands such as Mövenpick, Peppers, The Sebel, Mantra, Mercure and ibis Styles.
Festival-goers can take advantage of the following rates during the event period, starting from $201 per night in Hobart and from $199 per night in Launceston.
To book visit all.accor.com/darkmofo
