Best free things to do at Dark Mofo 2019

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/dark-path

‘And when you’re out in the woods, be nice and good and don’t stray from the path.’—Brothers Grimm, Little Red Cap

An art trail snaking through the inner-city wilderness of Queen’s Domain, including the old Beaumaris Zoo, the Queen Victoria Powder Magazine and the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. Many strange, reflective and wondrous works can be found along the path, and the way will be marked with light.

Note: Dark Path involves a lot of walking—roughly 4km from start to finish, and takes around 45 minutes (not including time to experience the artworks and events). The route is dark, covers uneven terrain, and some parts are not accessible by wheelchair; if you have mobility requirements, contact tickets@mona.net.au in advance to discuss alternative access options. Dark Mofo is engaged in stakeholder consultation with local residents and groups, and working closely with Bushlands & Parks and Recreation to protect native habitats and species, complying with all Council requirements in order to protect the Soldiers' Memorial Avenue site and its heritage.
+ Friday 14–Sunday 16 June, 5–10pm

+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, 5–10pm
Regatta Grounds + Queens Domain + Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.
Access via Regatta Grounds (road closures in place around the Domain and Gardens). Free, unless stated otherwise.

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/dark-path/tony-oursler-6th

As night falls, traipse up to the old Beaumaris Zoo (in which the last known thylacine died in the 1930s) where strange and spectral video projections play across the trees and shimmer in the mist, spectral characters haunt the shadows and interact with neo-mythological memes, scientific thinking, and gene-splicing technology.
American multimedia and installation artist Tony Oursler’s sprawling new work confronts the erosion of critical thought, and the rise of misinformation, conspiracy theories, superstition, and magical thinking, inviting us to ask if it is truth on the verge of extinction. Supported by the United States Government.
+ Friday 14–Sunday 16 June, 5–10pm,

+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, 5–10pm, Beaumaris Zoo, free

An ephemeral memorial to one hundred and eighty children stolen or lost during the early colonial years of the island. Part of Tense Past, Gough’s exhibition at TMAG. Presented by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Dark Mofo, supported by Gandel Philanthropy.

+ Friday 14–Sunday 23 June, open 24 hours a day, Bushland, Queens Domain

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/dark-path/naomi-blacklock-limbic-resonance

In this ritualistic noise performance and installation, primal screaming and meditative breathing will ring across the dark gardens. With candles, bells, salt, soil, mirrors and her voice, Brisbane-based Anglo-Indian artist Naomi Blacklock explores mythologies of the witch: a symbol old and new of otherness, rebellion and emancipation. Intermittent performances nightly.
+ Friday 14–Sunday 16 June, 5–10pm
+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, 5–10pm, Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens

A radioactive metal sphere emits flashes of light and sound, causing tanks of luminescent zooplankton, chemicals and a cosmic cloud chamber to glow and fade in the darkness. Inspired by a disastrous experiment at a major American nuclear facility in the 1940s.
Melbourne-based artist Chris Henschke’s work is informed by years of scientific research, including an artist residency at CERN, Geneva—home of the Large Hadron Collider.
+ Friday 14–Sunday 16 June, 5–10pm

+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, 5–10pm, Queen Victoria Powder Magazine, Queen’s Domain, Hobart

This project will see a bunch of artists grapple with the human urge to alter, capture and reproduce the natural environment—but also, how we distinguish ourselves from it. From Launceston to Hobart, they will explore connections between historic Tasmanian animal enclosures, the state’s expanding tourism economy, and examples of capturing and mimicking nature from around the world. Curated by Liam James and Brigitte Trobbiani.
+ Friday 14–Sunday 16 June,

+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, 5–10pm, Queens Domain, Hobart

+ Friday 14–Saturday 29 June, Sawtooth ARI, Cimitiere St, Launceston

Other free highlights 

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/jimmy-cauty-the-aftermath-dislocation-principle

Peer through holes cut into a forty-foot shipping container at a vast landscape modelled in a miniature scale of 1:87: a desolate, mythical English town frozen in the aftermath of a riot, where only police and media crews remain. After appearing at Banksy’s Dismaland in 2015, ADP now tours the world.
English artist and musician Jimmy Cauty is known as one half of the duo The KLF, and The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, co-founder of The Orb and as the man who burnt one million pounds. Presented by L-13 Light Industrial Workshop and Dark Mofo.
Explore the art with the Children of the Aftermath:

+ Thursday 13–Sunday 16 June, 4–10pm

+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, 4–10pm, in front of Hobart Town Hall, Macquarie Street

Or see it on your own, 24-hours a day:

+ Thursday 13–Sunday 23 June, in front of Hobart Town Hall, Macquarie Street

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/saeborg 

A latex wonderland inside an old theatre, dreamt up by Japanese artist Saeborg with her self-made Kawaii kink craft. A giant pig gives birth in Pigpen to a litter of scrambling, human-sized piglets, desperate to suckle and feed. Nearby, livestock cavort around an inflatable, technicolour farmyard in Slaughterhouse-15, and act out a demented circle of life.

+ Wednesday 12–Sunday 16 June

+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, Avalon Theatre

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/paul-yore-its-all-wrong-but-its-alright

From the NGV, Heide, and Gertrude Contemporary to Sunday Art Fair London, Melbourne-based artist Paul Yore’s riotously colourful soft-sculptural works have ranged from subverted paper collage to hand-stitched and sequinned needlepoint tapestry, deconstructing culture and the physical extremes of art. For Dark Mofo, Yore’s new and historic works will turn DarkLab’s deconsecretaed church into a technicolour chapel of worship for Dolly Parton, Justin Bieber, and other icons of love, sex and excess.
+ Friday 7–Sunday 9 June,

+ Wednesday 12–Sunday 16 June,

+ Wednesday 19–Sunday 23 June, Black Temple Gallery (47 Davey St)

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/tony-albert-confessions

Australian mixed-media artist Tony Albert (NGV, The National 2019, Art Basel Hong Kong 2019) turns an urban conceptual eye on political, historical, and cultural Aboriginal and Australian history. Confessions is a new interactive art commission from the artist who was raised Catholic, alongside iconic works from the past decade, new commissions, and recent collaborations with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.
+ Tuesday 6 June - 14 July, Contemporary Art Tasmania, 12pm - 5pm daily, free

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/julie-gough-tense-past

This major exhibition by Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Julie Gough questions and re-evaluates colonial history and the impact of colonisation on Tasmania’s first people—then and now. As well as including some of the best artworks from Gough’s oeuvre, Tense Past presents new and site-specific artworks that engage with artefacts from major collections from across the country. Curated by Mary Knights. Presented by Dark Mofo and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
+ Exhibition opening: Friday 7 June, 6–10pm

+ Continues until Sunday 3 November, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, free

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/winter-feast

 Free each night after 8pm, and free all night on the last evening! Dark Mofo’s Dionysian feast returns for 8 nights over two weeks, sprawled across Princes Wharf 1 on Salamanca’s waterfront with crackling fires, live music, warming comfort food and delectable drinks. The Winter Feast is a contemporary take on pagan solstice celebrations and the hedonistic hub of the festival, where the community gathers to indulge together as the longest night of the year approaches in Australia’s southernmost city.

+ The Winter Feast is ticketed most nights, but free on Sunday 23 June and after 8pm all other nights

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/the-in-between

A celebration of liminal spaces and the undefinable: that thing you glimpse out of the corner of your eye, the feeling you can’t quite put your finger on.

+ Opening Thursday 13 June, 6-10pm

+ Friday 14 - Sunday 23 June, 10am-4pm (open until 10pm on Fridays + Saturdays), Salamanca Arts Centre, free

Presented by Salamanca Arts Centre and Dark Mofo

• MICHAELA GLEAVE WITH AMANDA COLE AND WARREN ARMSTRONG | CORONAL MASS

An electrically-charged wave of sound surges through the gallery, transcribing the patterns of solar wind and the Aurora Australis.

• SELENA DE CARVAHLO | BEWARE OF IMPOSTERS (THE SECRET LIFE OF FLOWERS)

Contemplate the fate of an ‘endling’ orchid, the last of its species found only in a rural Tasmanian cemetery, via an immersive sculptural installation. Entry limited to one person at a time.

• NICOLA GOWER WALLIS | THE VAN DIEMONIANS: A CATALOGUE OF HOBARTIAN MYTHOLOGY

A collection of works on paper and an interactive installation of folding wooden frames, reimagining Tasmanian mythology through local stories.

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/mike-parr-towards-a-black-square

 The artist returns after what he thought would be his final performance at last year’s Dark Mofo, with a new work disorientated by Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915).

The audience will witness a live video feed of a performance featuring a blindfolded Parr in an undisclosed location, navigating a bare gallery space with brush and black paint. The location will later be revealed and open as an exhibition for a short time, before the walls are painted out and returned to their original state. The artist will then join us in conversation at the Odeon.

+ Live-stream performance: Friday 7 June, Generator Room, Old Mercury Building, access via Lords Place, 10am–6pm, free

+ Exhibition: Saturday 8–Sunday 16 June, venue to be revealed, 12–6pm, free

+ Conversation: Saturday 8 June, Odeon Theatre, 1pm, free

Write down your fears and commit them into the feathers of a giant swift parrot, an endangered species that breeds in Tasmania and is the shape of this year’s ogoh-ogoh. Following Balinese Hindu tradition the demon-like totem, crafted in collaboration with Balinese makers, will be burned along with the community’s fears at the close of the festival.

+ Friday 14 - Sunday 16 June

+ Wednesday 19 - Sunday 23 June, The Goods Shed, Macquarie Point, Hobart, 5-10pm, free

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/nude-solstice-swim

 A communal ritual in which over 1000 brave souls welcome back the first sun after the longest night of the year, by diving nude into the winter ocean.

+ Saturday 22 June, Long Beach, Sandy Bay, 7.42am, free with registration, 18+

https://darkmofo.net.au/program/the-burning-ogoh-ogoh

Parade around the waterfront in a massive communal ritual of purification and renewal, as we sacrifice our swift parrot-shaped ogoh-ogoh—and our fears with it—in a blazing forest of smoke, fire and noise.

+ Sunday 23 June, Parliament Lawns to Macquarie Point, 5pm, free

Information included in this blog is correct at the time of publishing. Please contact individual operators for further information.