Presented by Tassie’s Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), Mona Foma is a unique summer festival spread across two weekends in Launceston and Hobart, showcasing a diverse range of art, music, and everything in between.
The festival has gained a reputation for pushing boundaries and challenging traditional artistic and musical conventions, attracting those seeking something out of the ordinary. The festival's program includes a wide range of events, from experimental music performances and immersive art installations to interactive workshops and engaging talks and discussions.
As described by MONA’s Senior Curator Emma Pike, Mona Foma is “An exhibition of genuine and manufactured 'coming-togetherness' within the decommissioned shell of the old Launceston Tafe.
The exhibition’s namesake is marketing material found in a dusty corner of the college which was produced to encourage enrolment in the 1980s. The exhibition speaks to a community's earnest desire for ‘coming-togetherness’ whilst acknowledging the impossibility of artificially fabricating such a thing. Several works are created through unlikely collaborations and successfully generate new communities through their development, while others express the desire for but failure to connect and the ramifications of this. Tongue in cheek interventions inhabit the site providing commentary on artificial, commercial and politicised ideas of community, from corporate team building to defunded community centres, place-making policies and failed education systems.”
We had the opportunity to work alongside Emma and the team to produce a selection of the visual arts program and develop the visitor experience, which was held for the first time in a vacant heritage building - affectionately known as the Old TAFE - in Launceston.
Works were hosted across a monopoly of rooms around the perimeter of the building including performance, audio/visual works and interactive works including |
Olho da Rua (Out Loud) 2022
Jonathas de Andrade
Commissioned and produced by Fondazione in Between Art Film
Video and Sound works
Courtesy Nara Roesler Gallery, New York
Border Farce 2022
Safdar Ahmed
Video installation
Breakfast in Bed 2016
Kenneth Tam
Video Installation
Manapanmirr, in Christmas Spirit 2012
Miyarrka Media
Video Installation
Courtesy Miyarrka Media
Song of the Sea Witch 2020
Marnie Weber
Video and Sound Installation
Courtesy the artist and Simon Lee Gallery, London
Interbeing 2018
Martina Hoogland Ivanow
two-channel video installation
Distributed by Filmform
To encourage visitors to move throughout the building, we leaned right on into creating the visitor experience, aptly titled Fantastic Futures. Think ‘Between Two Ferns’ meets water cooler moments - meets motivational post-it - meets lots of things happening in circles. Dressed subtly enough to draw visitors in and question the irony, the aesthetic repeated itself across the hallways, nooks and spaces of the Old Tafe.
By night, the exterior areas played host to a diverse line-up of music programming including Kae Tempest, The Chills, Perturbator, and Soccer Mommy. As part of the evening shift visual transformation, we teamed up with the Lighting Director to create spaces that lightened dark spaces and lured guests into the Punk Bunker - an epic pit of sweat and orange haze.