Dark Mofo is in its tenth year and in 2023 will share a line up of art, music, performance and ‘nocturnal revelry’ from 8 to 22 June.
Opening night will be celebrated at In the Hanging Garden with a selection of Palawa and Aboriginal artists in a precinct-wide takeover curated by Dylan Hoskins, a Gumbaynggirr and Dunghutti man who has been working with the festival as a cultural advisor. Caleb Nichols-Mansell, a palawa visual artist, photographer, and Founder and Creative Director of Blackspace Creative Arts and Cultural Hub, has also been working on this iteration of the event.
In the arts, ‘Ngarnda’ by Curtis Taylor is a single channel video work in which the artist references blood rituals and cultural rites using his own blood and body as a vehicle to bring what’s unseen to the fore. ‘Ngarnda’ translates to pain in Martu language. Curtis Taylor will also present ‘Boong’, which is described by the festival as ‘Bull bars, spotlights, and a soundscape of roaring gun shots, revving engines and aggressive dialogue reference the racially violent landscape in which the slur became folklore.’ The venue for these artworks is listed on the website as ‘to be confirmed.’
The Twist is an immersive experience at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery which will ‘present works rooted in Dickensian themes of exploitation, crime, abuse, and corruption—with a twist.’ On some select evenings you can enjoy the presentation with a DJ and bar set-up.
Interfacial Intimacies hosted by Plimsoll Gallery curates the work of artists to share ‘a series of portraits and anti-portraits confront the tensions of our networked personalities—our shadows, our masks, our shame.’
Histories at Good Grief Gallery asks ‘how does our articulation of the past impact the present?’ with the work of leading artists, including Archie Moore, the second solo First Nations artist set to present at the Venice Biennale.
The Blue Rose Ball at a secret location is a hedonistic masquerade on Wednesday 7th with an array of cocktails, wines, aperitifs and epicurean provisions; costume essential. Winter Feast is an outdoor night-time event at the Princes Wharf no.1 running across two weeks. It’s promised to be a big party accompanied by a banquet, music, stallholders, fire and wine. Night Mass: Extasia is another after dark experience, it promises ‘Art, music, performance, cocktail lounges, punk theatre, cinema cabarets, clubs and junkyard raves—inside a sprawling metropolis’ on the Friday and Saturday nights of the festival. The Nude Solstice Swim will take place at sunrise on 22 June, there’s no booking fee but you will need a ticket to participate.
Visit the Dark Mofo website for a full line-up of the events.