New Dark Path details revealed as more Dark Mofo music and art announced

Dark Mofo’s new installation has been revealed in all its strangeness with the free outdoor, after-dark art walk program released. SEE THE MAP

DARK Mofo’s new installation, Dark Path, has been revealed in all its strangeness with the free outdoor, after-dark art walk program announced on Wednesday morning.

And in a move set to please war veterans, there have been no installations announced on the Soldier’s Memorial Avenue itself, an area of the path that struck controversy.

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Friends of Soldiers Memorial Avenue president Stephen Carey said they had been consulted by Dark Mofo and negotiated what physical structures would be allowed on the footpath within the grounds.

“At the end of the meeting we came away feeling comfortable with what was planned,” Mr Carey said.

Dark Path map 2019. Courtesy of Dark Mofo.

Dark Path organisers said they have complied with all council requirements in order to protect the Soldier’s Memorial Avenue site and its heritage.

“With the Soldiers Memorial section of Dark Path, we wanted to create a quiet and introspective walk through this natural part of the reserve,” Dark Mofo executive producer Lucy Forge said.

But in the festival’s true nature, the artworks announced for Dark Path explore the extinction of truth, the lost children during the island’s colonial years, mythologies of the witch through sound and confronting colonial trauma through a British ritual subverted by an Aboriginal performance.

The trail winds from Hobart’s waterfront Regatta Grounds over the Bridge of Remembrance and up through the urban bushland of the Queen’s Domain and through to the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.

It will be 4km from start to finish and take about one houre – not including time to experience the artworks and events.

Julie Gough’s Missing or Dead. Image courtesy of the artist and DarkLab

At the final point of the path, the Royal Botanical Gardens will be riddled with food vans, pop-up cafes/bars, light shows for people of all ages and laser/mist light works by American artist Tony Oursler.

With surround sound, visitors to the gardens will hear primal screams and meditative breathing intermittently on their journey throughout, as part of Naomi Blacklock’s Limbic Resonance.

Other artworks include Chris Henschke’s Demon Core at the Queen Victoria Powder Magazine on the Queen’s Domain, where a radioactive metal sphere will emit flashes of light and sound, causing tanks of luminescent zooplankton, chemicals and a cosmic cloud chamber to glow and fade in the darkness.

Briggs. Image courtesy of the artist and DarkLab

The path walks through the bushland of the Queens Domain, where there will be an ephemeral memorial to 180 children stolen or lost during the early colonial years of the island. The artwork by Tasmanian Julie Gough, Missing or Dead, is presented by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Dark Mofo and supported by Gandel Philanthropy.

Government House will invite guests in for tea and scones for a traditional British ritual while before them three Aboriginal performers will offer what Dark Mofo said will be a “provocative choice”.

More artwork and acts have also been added to this year’s Dark Mofo lineup separate from Dark Path, including Australian hip-hop artist Briggs and Sydney’s mathcore rockers Totally Unicorn.

Punters will also be able to peep through holes cut into a forty-foot shipping container at a desolate, mythical English town frozen in the aftermath of a riot, where only police and media crews remain, in Jimmy Cauty’s The Aftermath Discolation Principle.

Jimmy Cauty’s The Aftermath Discolation Principle. Image courtesy of the artist and DarkLab.

Details of the Dark Mofo and City of Hobart Winter Feast have also been revealed, which will feature close to 80 stallholders, as well as a new engaging hands-on kids’ program, while interstate and Tasmanian guest chefs will form collaborations with custom menus.

The site where the last known thylacine died in the 1930s, the crumbles of the old Beaumaris Zoo, will come alive with strange and spectral video projections playing across the trees and shimmering in the mist by American multimedia and installation artist Tony Oursler.

For the full program and more information, visit darkmofo.net.au