Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art is back in the news with its inaugural winter festival Dark Mofo, which lit up the city over the weekend.
The visual arts component of the festival includes Kurt Hentschlager's installation Zee, which comes with a warning of its hallucinatory and potentially dangerous effects. People entering the piece must sign a waiver as the work can trigger what the artist decribes as an emergency shutdown of the brain as it struggles to process the aural and visual onslaught. But other works in the program offer more contemplative experiences, such as Ryoji Ikeda's tower of pure white light reaching 15 kilometers into Hobart's night sky.
MONA has transformed Hobart, putting what was once regarded as a sleepy hollow on the global arts and culture map. And the state government is happily piggybacking on the stunning success of the museum - on this occasion by contributing $1 million a year for three years to the winter festival.
Images: Kurt Hentschlager's Zee and Ryoji Ikeda's Spectra [Tasmania], featuring in MONA's winter festival Dark Mojo
