Dark Mofo reveals provocative new artwork that highlights sadistic power

A provocative newly commissioned artwork is a key component of Dark Mofo, the winter festival that returns to Hobart this winter.

The organisers of Tasmania's mid-winter solstice celebration today revealed the first work in the 2025 festival.

The announcement comes after 6,000 pre-release tickets to festival favourite Night Mass sold out in less than four hours in November, and ahead of the full program release on April 4.

Dark Mofo’s new artistic firector Chris Twite said: ‘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.

‘We’re grateful for the support of the state government and the continued generosity of [MONA owner] David Walsh, which is allowing us to lay the foundation for another incredible decade of Dark Mofo.

‘It was encouraging to sell over 6,000 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 April 4.

‘Today we are excited to reveal the first piece of the festival's massive city wide contemporary art program with a powerful new work by Nathan Maynard".

Premiering at Dark Mofo in 2025 is We threw them down the rocks where they had thrown the sheep, a new commission by multidisciplinary Trawlwoolway artist Nathan Maynard.

Locked in a nondescript basement in Nipaluna/Hobart’s CBD, this ambitious work uses flesh to lay bare the legacy of cultural theft and erasure in a mass installation. think sheep heads preserved in glass jars. 

"Languishing in museums and their storerooms are the remains of ancestors of First Nations people from all around our globe," Maynard says.

"They have been stripped of identity and, without consent, treated like specimens for study and scientific inquiry.

"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."

Maynard’s installation is the first work to be revealed from the Dark Mofo 2025 program - featuring two weeks of "contemporary art, live music, ritual and revelry in the depths of winter".

Yo receive program updates and access to festival tickets see www.darkmofo.net.au.

Dark Mofo will run between June 5-15 and on June 21.