It’s a Thursday night in Hobart and I’m lying in a half open coffin at Dark Mofo. A stranger takes a photo of me lying in this prematurely experienced final resting place. Does one smile, unperturbed by the weirdness? Or commit to the bit and play dead? I go for the latter and the coffin closes on me.
In the darkness I realise I’ve just waited over an hour to lie in a glorified bed for two minutes, all under the guise that there is something inherently gothic about playing with the inevitability of death.
Finally, some rest. (Credit: Supplied)
Dark Mofo’s paganistic preoccupation with decay and pain is part of its make-up. The annual mid-winter festival, from Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), was launched to erect shadows in a state of peaceful villagers, used to seeking light. Within these manufactured shadows, the minds behind MONA attempt to insert artistic explorations of humanity – as told through intrigue, pain, sex and naturalism – into the heart of Tasmanian counterculture.
In its initial years, the festival seemingly achieved its goal – shocking the broadly insulated people of Hobart with its unabashed encouragement of disobedience and unconventionalism. In 2025, however, it’s more like a wholesome winter feast for the whole family, with some charmingly witchy art nearby.
“When they first started in 2013 and put up the big upside down cross in the centre of town, people were so shocked! A lot of people down here were pretty religious at that stage and didn’t know what to make of it,” Lyn McGaurr, a local to the area (and my aunt), tells me on the drive down.
As someone who’s been coming to Hobart since I was a baby, my dad’s family has lived down here for more than 40 years, I can attest it was never a particularly diverse or exciting place. It was a small town with locals who enjoyed their seafood and the fact that no one was there to disrupt their peace.
That was until MONA opened its doors.
The trouble is that most people aren’t offended by Dark Mofo’s devilishness anymore. Meaning that in practice, its gothic overtones are reduced to a decorative theme more than anything else.
Truthfully, when I decided to attend for the first time, I was intimidated by the cultural authority of a MONA fest. My obvious conformity and noteless normalcy felt exposed just by the thought of Dark Mofo.
What I encountered instead was a bunch of screaming toddlers in front of a 12 metre large sign that read “I’ve composed a new national anthem: Take A Knee And Scream Until You Can’t Breathe”.
Sound advice. (Credit: Supplied)
You could see the sign from the other end of the festival’s Dark Park, the second public venue of the festival where each year’s unique exhibits are put on display, and hear the ominous, guttural screams on approach — only to discover that the screams were those of children and their excited parents.
“The theme this year is meat,” a passerby says as we walk past the Stillwater restaurant’s pop up at the winter feast, which has wallabies spinning on a spit over a fire. While I can’t find confirmation of this in Dark Mofo’s own promotional material, it strikes me as on the nose for a pagan event, and the dead animals are still not half as shocking as they perhaps intended.
I think that the disconnection between what the organisers had achieved in the past, which was confronting people’s sense of comfort and mundanity with displays of pain, danger and the unusual so public that they couldn’t be ignored, and the reality of what the festival is today is an earnestness that suffocates its own flames.
Where MONA itself manages to continue to push boundaries and hold on to its position as a beacon for subversive Australian art, Dark Mofo falls short. David Walsh’s vision for MONA has thrived on its self-awareness and self-deprecating humour at its own ludicrousy, which seems to be precisely the qualities Dark Mofo lacks.
As I write my fears on a piece of paper with a sharpie – as directed by a kind woman in her 60s, surrounded by a hoard of children and their parents – I grin to myself, as I realise something about it all: it’s cute.
It’s a lovely, pseudo gothic winter festival not unlike a European Christmas market (minus the typical Jesus element).
While I can’t see anything genuinely unusual or anyone remotely confronted by anything they’re seeing, I can see a town that used to, arguably, be the antithesis of culture, embracing an artistic festival that celebrates art, community and good food.
The only problem being that that’s the opposite of what it set out to be.
“You’ve never looked more alive,” the man – ahead of me in the queue for the coffin ride – says to his friend as he joyfully climbs out of the funeral scene. It’s true, I think to myself: we’re all alive and laughing – in front of art meant to shock us with death.
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