MONA FOMA

This weekend sees the return of MONA FOMA or Mofo, Mona’s Festival of Music and Art, curated by Brian Ritchie. Now in its ninth year, the festival runs from 18th –22nd January (20th–22nd at Mona itself).

Crowds return year after year to enjoy the festival that marks the height of the Tasmanian summer and transforms the city.

This year’s festival program brings together a mixture of sound and visual artists as well as interactive installations to present a unique event that offers something for everyone. Relax on the lawn with a Moorilla wine or Moo Brew beer in bespoke drinking vessels while enjoying some of the world's most original performers light up the stage. Moorilla will also be offering tastings of their Cloth Label series at the Cloth Label Viewing Platform within the winery.

Event times vary, but the Mona site is open to Three-Day Mona Pass and respective Day Pass holders between 10am and 10pm Friday 20th, Saturday 21st, and Sunday 22nd January. If you'd like to visit the museum during this time, you will need to purchase one of these tickets.

As well as the activities at Mona, off site events are being held at the Theatre Royal, Brooke Street Pier, Hobart Town Hall, Salamanca Arts Centre and Contemporary Art Tasmania.

The full line up can be found here.

If you need further convincing, Mona's owner, David Walsh puts it best:

A quaver, a crotchet, a clever tone,
A cantata, a sonata, an edgy drone.
Sunshine, a lawn, a lager, a rosé.
A band of four, a balladeer
A raucous caucus raging
A rap, a sing-a-long,
A song of protest falling on deaf ears
Little found to protest here.
A picture from another age
Can't compare with centre stage
On grass and bag and legs of jelly
The evening a conducted sky
Magnified in art and pickled memory
All good things amplified
By being shared and by being there.
You – home and wait another year
We – dream and scheme
And tear out our hair.