MONA stands for the Museum of Old and New Art and MONA FOMA stands for the MONA Festival of Music and Art and it’s called MOFO for short. If you find yourself at the end and other side of the world this summer (yes, it’s summer in January here!) you may be very interested in attending MOFO and the official opening of MONA. MOFO starts it all off from 14th – 20th January and it’s the drum roll to the official opening of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) from 21st – 23rd January, 2011. And I hope that I haven’t lost you…
MONA FOMA has recently announced a small snippet of what will be on offer for the Festival. From January 14-20, curator Brian Ritchie (who now lives in Hobart) of Violent Femmes and now The Break fame will present quite an incredible array of massive and amazing music, dance, theatre, visual art, performance and new media. It’s a mix of first-time appearances, festival favourites and exclusive one-off performances and it’s mostly free! So here it is. The recently unveiled 2011 Festival line up so far – avant-garde minimalist composer Phillip Glass along with cellist Wendy Sutter, Nick Cave and co’s Grinderman, post-punk pioneers Wire, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Health, Amanda Palmer and The Break, along with a wide range of performance artists, including a very special performance from Neil Gaiman with Fourplay and Eddie Campbell.
The MONA opening weekend will follow with a huge party with more live bands and performances. There promises to be pyrotechnics of one sort or another. And rumour even has it that David Bowie (it is a rumour) will be performing at the opening!! The Museum of Old and New Art is located at Moorilla, 20 minutes from the Hobart CBD and has aspirations of becoming Australia’s newest must-see destination. The mega multi-million dollar museum with the mega multi-million dollar collection of art and antiquities (with its curatorial themes of ’sex’ and ‘death’), being developed by Hobart businessman and art collector David Walsh, will be the country’s biggest private art museum. It all promises to be huge - like, really huge!!
MONA FOMA
14 – 20 January, 2011
MONA
opening weekend
21 – 23 January, 2011
Hobart
Tasmania
Australia
