Mona Foma 2022 program revealed: Eclectic lineup for popular Tasmanian festival
Tasmanian music and art festival Mona Foma will be back bigger and better than ever in January, with organisers announcing a jam-packed lineup for the 2022 event. LINEUP + TICKETS >>
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Mona Foma has unveiled its highly anticipated 2022 program – and Tasmanian Aboriginal voices are front and centre.
Now entering its 15th year, the wildly popular music and art festival will return bigger and better than ever in January, after the 2021 event was hampered by border restrictions.
The festival will again adopt the dual city model that proved such a success this year, with a program spanning across both Hobart and Launceston.
Among the highlights in both the north and south will be the legendary Midnight Oil playing songs from their upcoming new album in two shows in each city, and Mo’Ju (Melbourne) performing with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
Notable international acts set to appear are Gwenno (UK) and The Chills (New Zealand).
tuylupa by pakana kanaplila and Tasdance will explore the 60,000 year history of Tasmanian Aboriginal people on the island, while Kartanya Maynard and Vernon Ah Kee will use two site-specific text and sound installations in Hobart and Launceston to interrogate the displacement of the state’s indigenous population.
Mona Foma artistic director Brian Ritchie said there was a “recurrent theme” in the 2022 program of “telling the millennia-long story of the Tasmanian indigenous people and artists”.
“That’s a theme we were aiming for, but it emerged stronger than we even thought,” he said.
Ritchie said he was looking forward to experiencing the entire program, but added: “What you’re looking forward to (at Mona Foma) and what ends up being the surprising hit of the festival is frequently different.”
“Something very unusual would be Calvin Bowman doing an 18-hour marathon of the complete organ works of Bach,” he said.
While the pandemic has presented numerous challenges for Mona Foma’s organisers, Ritchie is adamant that the festival’s tried-and-true approach is ideally suited to weather the Covid storm.
“There are a lot of these cookie-cutter festivals, where it’s basically the same venue, same basic format,” he said.
“Our model that we’ve had all along is really the way festivals should be run.
“There should be a mixture of indoor and outdoor, there should be a mix of free and ticketed (events), there should be the use of a lot of interesting venues, and the focus should be on the audience experience, not just trying to put a bunch of names on a poster and make a lot of money.”
Mona Foma will kick off in Launceston from Friday, January 21 – Sunday, January 23, and continue in Hobart from Friday, January 28 – Sunday, January 30.
THE LINEUP:
Highlights in both cities include:
Midnight Oil + Mofo Sessions + pakana kanaplila & Tasdance: tuylupa + Terrapin: Monster Trucks + Ashleigh Musk & Michael Smith: Fertile Ground + Ed Atkins (UK) + Calvin Bowman + Faux Mo + Mo’Ju + Kartanya Maynard & Vernon Ah Kee + Gwenno (UK) + Julie Gough: The Missing spanning the Midland Highway
Launceston highlights:
Legs on the Wall: THAW + Megan Cope: Untitled (Death Song) + Thomas Demand: Pacific Sun (GER) + Warren Mason: Tin Camp Studio + Emily Sanzaro: Awaken
nipaluna / Hobart highlights:
Robin Fox: BEACON + Theresa Sainty & Sharnie Read: PANUPIRI, WITHI MAPALI + Terrapin with Dylan Sheridan: All Day Breakfast + Alicia Frankovich: AQI2020 (NZ) + Anri Sala: Time No Longer (ALB/GER) + DJ TR! P & Scot Cotterell: Organ Donor + Quartet for the End of Time
See the full festival program at mofo.net.au
Shock and awe: Laser show to light up Mona Foma sky
ROBIN Fox is no stranger to Mona Foma – he has appeared on the festival bill every year since its inception more than a decade ago.
So, while it may come as no surprise that the respected Melbourne-based artist and composer will again return to Tasmania in 2022, his ambitious new work is sure to produce shock and awe among festivalgoers.
With BEACON, Fox will place five high-powered laser units – capable of producing up to 60 watts of pulsed light – atop Rosny Hill, from where they will cast beams across the River Derwent, touching the Hobart CBD and kunanyi/Mt Wellington, and sweeping across the skyline in sync with an accompanying soundtrack accessed via a web app.
“What I’m intending to do is to create this kind of work that’s incredibly beautiful but temporally ephemeral,” Fox said.
“I think there is something about works at this scale that induce a kind of feeling of awe.
“Because it’s such a big thing but then because I’ve had to use the web app in terms of delivering the audio, it becomes intimate. So I think there’s something in the relationship between the intimacy and the awesomeness that creates that space.
“And I think with the audiovisual connection, the connection between the sound and the light, that’s what I’ve tried to play with – that feeling that there’s something close to you and there’s something a long way away from you but those two things are the same. It’s trying to close that gap, which is the challenge aesthetically.
“I’m as excited as anybody else about how that’s going to pan out.”
At Mona Foma 2021, Fox delighted punters with his work Aqua Luma, in which eight laser projectors and four controllable fountains transformed Launceston’s Cataract Gorge.
Fox said he felt a special connection to Mona Foma and Tasmania.
“Apparently my grandmother was born off the coast of Strahan in a boat in the middle of a storm,” he said.
“So I’m attached to the place in some weird way.”
BEACON will run from 9.30-11.30pm from Friday, January 28 until Sunday, January 30.
Midnight Oil confirms four Mona Foma shows across Tassie
LEGENDARY Aussie rock band Midnight Oil is the first act announced for the 2022 Mona Foma, and will perform for two nights in both Launceston and Hobart as part of the summer festival.
Oils founding member Rob Hirst told the Mercury the gigs would be one of the band’s first following an easing of Covid restrictions after having to tour their latest album – The Makarrata Project – in the midst of the pandemic.
“I think the venues are fantastic, outside Mona out on the lawn, and in Launceston next to the river are great locations,” he said.
“I sense people are so desperately sick of being inside and watching their little screens or big screens.
“I expect that the shows will be large and joyful, and we are certainly looking forward to them.”
Hirst revealed Oils fans can expect a bit of old, a bit of new from their latest release and some yet-to-be-released tracks in response to the recent COP26 climate summit.
Midnight Oil promises to bring its iconic political and environmental themes with myriad Tasmanian issues in the mix.
“Tasmanians have always been in the forefront of the battle going right back to Lake Pedder and beyond, and friends of ours like Richard Flanagan and others have fought the good fight,” Hirst said.
“Hopefully we’ll hook up with those folks and talk about issues that are very important to Tasmania and Tasmanians, including the future of old-growth logging, the future of the salmon industry, so many issues.”
Hirst said he was pumped to work with Mona and Mona Foma again as he and the other members of the Oils have done frequently in the past.
“We actually played at the beginning of the Mona gallery. So we were there from the start,” he reminisced.
“Members of Midnight Oil have been to almost every Mona Foma festival from the beginning, as individuals, if not with the band.
“People have flocked down (to Tasmania) and they’ve discovered, through Mona, this amazing place.”
He said the band had even scheduled time to stay and explore – so don’t be surprised if you run into members of the group out in the wilderness.
Hirst took a particular liking to the Three Capes track during a previous visit and said he was keen to hit the Tasman Peninsula trail again.
Hirst took a particular liking to the Three Capes track during a previous visit and said he was keen to hit the Tasman Peninsula trail again.
“It’s just one of the most atmospheric and breathtaking places on earth.”
Mona Foma artistic director Brian Ritchie said fans could expect a “riveting stage presence”. “Mona Foma is proud to bring this essential band to Tasmania for a rare series of intimate shows,” he said.
The gigs will take place at Royal Park in Launceston January 23 and 25, and at Mona Lawns on January 28 and 31.
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