Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds w/ the Saints

A new urban Festival Of Music and Art, MONA FOMA will assault Hobart with a deluge of new sights and sounds from January 9-12, 2009.

MONA FOMA will be a festival like no other. Curated by Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes, MONA FOMA uses music and art to engage the new. The music will be edgy and challenging. So will the art, drawn from the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) collection and beyond.

The Festival will be centred in and around Salamanca Arts Centre and MONA’s home at the Moorilla vineyard, spilling into other parts of Hobart from the Republic Bar to St. David’s Cathedral. Other sites will host MONA FOMA programs in the most surprising ways.

MONA FOMA is the love-child of a new creative partnership between Salamanca Arts Centre, MONA and Brian Ritchie. MONA FOMA is supported by the Tasmanian Government and Major Sponsor is Moorilla.

Salamanca Arts Centre Director Rosemary Miller said Curator Brian Ritchie has selected musicians from around the world who have taken their music to the edge of their art.

Headlining the festival’s international guest list is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, performing their only Tasmanian concert with special guests The Saints, in their first ever tour to Tasmania. All other MONA FOMA program events will be FREE to the public.

Announcing the festival’s program highlights, Ritchie said: ‘MONA FOMA will stimulate new thought and excitement about where and how we live. This won’t be a festival for the faint-of-heart but it will be worth the effort. And a lot of fun. Listen to the art, look at the music, love it, hate it, or ignore it.”

MONA will reveal some of its collection in an exhibition titled Discord: Art from MONA at Salamanca Arts Centre’s Long Gallery. Curator Nicole Durling says “We have chosen discordant art that brings together technology and the organic in a show that gives a hint of what to expect when MONA opens in 2010.”

The full MONA FOMA program will be revealed in December. Further information and announcements are available at www.mofo.net.au.
$89.00 (standard price) + booking fee
Tickets are available from the following outlets:
Derwent Entertainment Centre : Brooker Highway, Glenorchy : (03) 6273 0233
www.ticketmaster.com.au : 136 100