Launceston, Tasmania
From giant inflatable swans to watching films as the smell of a urinal wafts up your nostrils, Mona’s summer festival is a heady cocktail of absurdities
As my Uber pulls up in the empty car park of the Elphin Sports Centre, the driver and I both look around warily, unsure if his map has led us to the right place. “I can take you to the gorge instead?” he offers.
The sites containing art, music and experiences at Mona Foma, the annual summer festival conceived by Hobart’s monolithic Museum of Old and New Art, seem to take one of two forms: large-scale and impossible-to-miss insertions of colour and sound deposited on the town of Launceston – as with Architects of Air, a massive, inflatable maze positioned next to a skate park and rowing club – or they’re like the Centre, a series of video art pieces displayed inside the courts, offices and locker rooms of the sports hall.
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It’s in the chance collision of art, space and audience that Mona seems to get its kicks
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