The festival that shook me out of a rut I didn’t know I was in

There’s a thud as a figure lurches from my right and lands on the floor. She’s dressed entirely in pink, and her head and hands are each completely encased in lumpy prosthetics. Over the next 40 minutes of Baby Girl the sole performer – Amber McCartney – has the audience’s rapt attention as she writhes, contorts and transforms.

Baby Girl, performed by Amber McCartney at Mona Foma 2023.Credit:Mona/Jesse Hunniford

The performance takes place in the depths of Mona – Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art – with Sidney Nolan’s sprawling artwork Snake forming a backdrop to the show, adding to the surreality of it all.

Baby Girl is disquieting, remarkable and impressively physical. It’s also the kind of work that I would not have actively sought out if it hadn’t been programmed as part of the Mona Foma festival. Now I can’t wait to see what McCartney does next.

When you’re choosing what performances, what exhibitions to fit around your daily life it makes sense to drift towards works that are familiar. After a while you cherry-pick. You know what you like and so you see more of the same. It makes sense.

The joy of a festival like Mona Foma, however, is that it gives the world you’ve built for yourself a gentle shake, so you can find something new to love, confirm something you hate, or discover your impression of something from afar was wrong.

A Deep Black Sleep, IHOS Amsterdam, Mona Foma 2023.Credit:Mona/Jesse Hunniford

Mona Foma takes place over two weekends, starting in Launceston before moving over to Hobart. Here, artistic director Brian Ritchie has brought together an eclectic lineup of events, where huge international acts sit alongside riskier works and local artists in a way that demonstrates that good art – art that makes you think, art that will challenge you – is all around.

It’s a strange schedule where in one day you move from a “film noir opera” where most characters communicate through instrumental music (and where, unexpectedly, a horse suddenly appears on stage), to a musical duet inspired by scientists writing about climate change, to open-air gigs by Angel Olsen and Pavement, then finishing it all up with The Party, held in a space where newspapers used to be printed. But that’s what makes it such a compelling line-up. It isn’t about providing something for everybody; it’s about immersing audiences in as many different types of works and ideas as possible.

There was the Queer Woodchop which delivered pretty much exactly what the title promised.

On the final night of the Mona Sessions, held out on the lawns of the museum, Kutcha Edwards commanded the stage with a mix of high energy and humour.

There’s Mona itself, which allows you to quite literally disappear into the ground and be surrounded by art of all kinds.

Peaches, Mona Sessions at Mona, Mona Foma 2023. Credit:Mona/Jesse Hunniford

Peaches (the stage name of Merrill Nisker) held her audience in thrall with an energetic yet intimate performance which included numerous costumes, nudity, a giant inflatable phallus, and a back and forth with her Auslan interpreter as she took great joy in seeing how certain very specific and rather graphic words played out across his hands.

Artist-in-residence Nico Muhly delivered an interactive choral performance on the same day the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra performed a cross-section of his work – including pieces about the final days of Alan Turing’s life and the unlikely discovery of Richard the III’s body in a Leicester carpark.

Urgent issues, in particular the deaths of First Nations people in custody and the unacceptable number of children in incarceration, were also put front and centre. Songs for Freedom on the Thursday night marked the 40th anniversary of the death of Jon Pat, who at the age of 16 died in the custody of Western Australian police. The event, created in collaboration between big hART and songwriters from Roebourne, WA, was both a tribute and a call to action.

Kutcha Edwards, Mona Sessions at Mona, Mona Foma 2023.Credit:Mona/Jesse Hunniford

And in between were the events that don’t fit neatly into a category.

There was Dumb Function, a small exhibition dedicated to the creation of objects that deliberately, obstinately are useless. There was The Party, which along with the DJ sets and pop up karaoke stalls allowed you to explore the nooks and crannies of a building that still nods to its former purpose. There was the Frying Pan, a newly built recording studio on the grounds of the museum, created around an iconic mixing deck which was used at Abbey Road. And on the final night, with dark clouds in the sky and mountains as her backdrop, I listened as performer Chloe Kim reached her goal of 100 hours of drumming in 10 days.

It’s easy to let your interests narrow over time, your world-view shrink down, to get lost in a bubble. Art allows you, even for a moment, to see through the eyes of others – to step out of your own experience. The more you see of it, the better.

Elizabeth Flux travelled to Hobart as a guest of Mona Foma.

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