With the announcement of Dark Mofo 2023 dates (June 8-22) comes the news of a key leadership change: Leigh Carmichael has stepped down as creative director of the Hobart winter arts and music festival, after nine years in the role.
2023 will be Carmichael's final year at the helm, and a new artistic director will be appointed to curate the festival from 2024.
Carmichael has been creative director of Dark Mofo since the festival was established in 2013.
"I feel that after ten years curating the Dark Mofo program, it's time for new energy and new ideas to move the festival forward," Carmichael said in a statement.
"Dark Mofo occupies an important place in the Australian arts landscape, and I am confident that it will continue to provide opportunities for artists and audiences to experience challenging art in the darkest weeks of the year."
Carmichael will retain his role as Director of DarkLab, the creative agency behind the festival, which also works on large-scale cultural projects in Tasmania.
"I will be devoting more time and energy into DarkLab's other cultural projects and pushing for better venues and more public infrastructure for Hobart so that it can cement its place as a vibrant cultural city," said Carmichael.
DarkLab's projects include the installation of Transformer by Doug Aitken, a new permanent art installation at Ida Bay in southern Tasmania, which is scheduled for completion in January 2024; and the ongoing operation and development of cultural venue In the Hanging Garden in Hobart.
The creative agency will continue to organise and produce Dark Mofo.
Almost 72,000 tickets were sold to the 2022 festival, which featured artists such as The Kid LAROI and Briggs, generating around $3.5 million in revenue. More than 5,200 tickets were sold to The Kid LAROI, the festival's most successful ticketed event to date.
The festival's opening event, a Reclamation Walk through the Hobart CBD, led by First Nations Elders, attracted about 5,000 attendees, up from 3,000 in 2021. Almost 23,000 people attended the final night of the festival's Winter Feast event, while more than 23,000 visited Japanese artist Hiromi Tango's free installation Rainbow Dream: Moon Rainbow.
Controversy and inter-festival collaboration
Dark Mofo has not been without controversy during Carmichael's tenure — most notably in 2021, when the festival invited First Nations peoples to donate their blood to a proposed artwork by a Spanish artist.
The proposed artwork led to a petition to Blak List Mona, calling for organisational change at the festival and associated gallery Mona (Museum of Old and New Art).
In response to the backlash, the festival committed to the establishment of a First Nations cultural advisory group and $60,000 in seed funding for the development works by Tasmanian Aboriginal artists.
In June this year, Carmichael said both initiatives were works in progress, with the process being led by DarkLab's First Nations cultural advisor, pakana artist Caleb Nichols-Mansell, who was appointed in 2021.
In September, Dark Mofo and DarkLab announced a partnership with Melbourne First Nations festival YIRRAMBOI, titled kin.
The festivals will together support the development of four new works by local First Nations artists, which will premiere at YIRRAMBOI and Dark Mofo in May and June 2023.
Overseeing and supporting this new work will be a core working group of First Nations artists and arts workers: playwright Nathan Maynard (Palawa), Nichols-Mansell (Palawa), a Koorie Elder (to be announced), YIRRAMBOI executive producer Sherene Stewart (Taungurung), and YIRRAMBOI associate producer Rosie Kalina (Wemba Wemba).
Dark Mofo 2023 will run from June 8-22 in Hobart.
