MONA FOMA is the wild child of arts festivals. It brings a rock festival edge to the arts, and an arts festival sense of play to music.
Emerging from the mind of evil genius David Walsh, whose art museum MONA has more in common with Dr No’s secret lair than it does with the Guggenheim, MONA FOMA (or MOFO) was created to see how far audiences could be pushed. FOMA—the Festival of Music and Art—is 4 year’s old, and it’s Director is Brian Ritchie – the former bass player for 80s US indie band Violent Femmes and now a Tasmanian.
Brian Ritchie says that a festival created by a gambler and a punk rocker was always going to be different. But what is perhaps most striking about MOFO is the capacity for playfulness and the riskiness of experiments, that goes with the non-conformity.
Michael Shirrefs visits Hobart to see how far he can be pushed and how brave the performers are.
Listen to the program here …