After a Year Off, Dark Mofo Is Still Keen to Challenge and Confront with Its First 2025 Lineup Announcement
Nathan Maynard's 'We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep' is the returning Tasmanian festival's first work for 2025.
Parties, art, music, performances, food, stripping bare for a swim to celebrate the winter solstice: that's the Dark Mofo way, and so is weaving its anything-can-happen vibe, its beloved regular highlights, and its array of expectation-exploding shows and events into a ritual as much as a festival. The Tasmanian winter arts fest is a place to commune, with attendees and with its boundary-pushing program alike. Challenge, confrontation, evoking a strong response: Dark Mofo is a place for that, too.
The festival sat out 2024, spending the time to regroup for the future ahead instead. Late that year, it announced its return for 2025, however. The full program will be unveiled at the beginning of April, but organisers have already announced the first new work. When attendees look at Nathan Maynard's We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep, they won't forget it.
Set to premiere at Dark Mofo 2025 — which runs from Thursday, June 5–Sunday, June 15, 2025, except for the Nude Solstice Swim on Saturday, June 21 — the new commission by the multidisciplinary Trawlwoolway artist will take over a Hobart CBD basement. Inside, expect a commentary on cultural theft and erasure via Maynard's mass installation, using sheep heads to make a statement.
"Languishing in museums and their storerooms are the remains of ancestors of First Nations people from all around our globe. They have been stripped of identity and, without consent, treated like specimens for study and scientific inquiry," explains the artist.
"We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep speaks to the sadistic power white institutions flex when they deny First Nations people the humanity of putting our ancestor's remains to rest in the physical and the spiritual."
When Dark Mofo's 2025 comeback was first revealed, so were the returns of a number of its beloved festivities: the aforementioned Nude Solstice Swim; Night Mass, which fills downtown Hobart with art and music; culinary highlight Winter Feast, which popped up in 2024 despite the festival around it taking a break; and the Ogoh-Ogoh. If you're wondering if the world missed Dark Mofo, the response to Night Mass alone so far says it all. When 6000 pre-release tickets were made available late in 2024, they were snapped up in less than four hours.
"Taking the year off in 2024 was a difficult decision, but Dark Mofo is back with renewed energy and focus, ready to deliver an enormous program spanning two packed weeks this June," notes Dark Mofo's new Artistic Director Chris Twite.
"It was encouraging to sell over 6000 Night Mass tickets in less than four hours during our pre-release late last year, indicating that demand for the festival remains strong. We are hoping for a similar response when we release the full program on the 4th April."
Back in November, Twite gave a few more hints at what's in store this year. "Dark Mofo is back. For our 11th chapter, once more we'll bathe the city in red and deliver two weeks of inspiring art, music and ritual," he advised when announcing the event's 2025 dates.
"Night Mass is a beast, and this year it will evolve once more — worming its way through the city with new spaces, performances and experiences to dance, explore or crawl your way through."
Dark Mofo returns from Thursday, June 5–Sunday, June 15, 2025 and for the Nude Solstice Swim on Saturday, June 21. Head to the festival's website for further details — and check back here on Friday, April 4, 2025 for the full lineup.
We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep images: Jesse Hunniford, 2025. Image courtesy of Dark Mofo 2025.
Night Mass images: Jesse Hunniford and Andy Hatton, 2023, courtesy of Dark Mofo 2023. Winter Feast images: Jesse Hunniford, 2023, courtesy of Dark Mofo 2023. Nude Solstice Swim images: Rémi Chauvin, 2023, courtesy of Dark Mofo 2023.
- Here's Which Key Events and Venues Have Been Cancelled, Postponed and Temporarily Closed Due to Tropical Cyclone Alfred
- Ten 2025 Oscar-Winning Films That You Can and Should Watch Immediately
- The Rainy-Day Guide to Brisbane
- Predicting the Oscars: Who Should, Could and Will Win at the 2025 Academy Awards
- Here's Where You Can Watch 33 of 2025's Oscar-Nominated Movies in Australia Right Now
- The Four Parks in Brisbane Where You Can BYO Drinks