Chris Twite can\u2019t believe his luck. Three years into his job as Dark Mofo\u2019s artistic director, his long-held dream of programming an all-out art exhibition in a mighty big ship has come true. That it\u2019s arrived courtesy of a monumental Tasmanian government stuff-up is something he\u2019d rather not dwell on.<\/p>\n
He is, as always, upbeat, wearing his trademark yellow-tinted glasses, and a bomber jacket against the chill. \u201cWhat do you reckon of our ship? Pretty good, I reckon!\u201d he says excitedly as we walk through the bowels of the new Spirit of Tasmania V. It\u2019s a huge open space, with a lattice of steel beams and snaking pipes on the ceiling, vast ramps, towering steel walls and bright yellow lines marking the lanes where cars, trucks and caravans will eventually go when the ferry starts its Bass Strait run late this year, well behind schedule. Built in Finland, the 212-metre-long ship was completed last June, and has been languishing in various ports ever since. For the past month, it has been docked at Station Pier, Port Melbourne.<\/p>\n
When Twite and his team discovered the delayed Spirit of Tasmania V would be in Hobart for a final fit-out around the time of this year\u2019s Dark Mofo winter festival, they sprang into action and emailed the state-owned operator, TT-Line, asking whether the ship could be used.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd everyone was like, let\u2019s definitely try to make this happen, we can work in and around each other,\u201d Twite says. \u201cEveryone is so excited to see it come together.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is in Melbourne to check on the progress of the art infrastructure being installed across two of the ship\u2019s vehicle decks \u2013 levels 3 and 5. The rest of the ship will be off limits. Workers in high-vis are busy putting the finishing touches to giant video screens at the ship\u2019s bow and stern, setting up rigging that will support text-based light works, and laying down a \u201cfield\u201d where menacing robot dogs, built by Argentinian and Japanese duo Lolo & Sosaku, will run amok in atmospheric light and fog.<\/p>\n
Though the artworks are yet to be installed, it\u2019s not hard to imagine the impact they\u2019ll have in this immense industrial space. There\u2019ll be booming soundscapes, dazzling lights, disorienting darkness and a thrilling sense of danger, all accentuated in the cavernous insides of this 48,000-tonne ship.<\/p>\n
Twite has programmed six large-scale works that reflect anxieties and horrors of our times: from war to racial violence, artificial intelligence and the deluge of online imagery. The works range in mood from Brazilian artist Berna Reale\u2019s quietly sinister video, Palomo, in which the artist, who is muzzled, rides a horse that is painted blood-red. They clip-clop through the streets of the Brazilian port city of Bel\u00e9m as locals watch with palpable unease. At the other end of the sound scale is the loud, techno-driven montage of American artist Arthur Jafa\u2019s APEX, a tsunami of images detailing Black culture and resistance.<\/p>\n
Other works include Guatemalan artist Regina Jos\u00e9 Galindo\u2019s video La Sombra, in which the artist is relentlessly pursued by a military tank; and illuminated text works by Melbourne-based artist Chunxiao Qu that appear to float in space, with one reading: \u201cThere is nothing left to pray for\u201d.<\/p>\n
With no obvious path leading from one artwork to another, audiences can explore at their own whim.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I love that you\u2019ll go past things like this,\u201d Twite says, as we wander past bolted steel panels, numbered bays and a wall padded with fire-retardant material that looks as cushiony as a mattress and acts as an improvised acoustic buffer. \u201cYou\u2019ll hear the machinery of the boat as well \u2026 Can you believe we\u2019re doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the world\u2019s biggest floating gallery. I\u2019ll never do this again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The morning we meet is dull and drizzly, and the colossal ship, with its feature red and white paintwork, adds a splash of colour to the gloom. Its sister ship, the Spirit of Tasmania IV, is docked around the curve of the bay, at Nelson Pier, Williamstown \u2013 an even stranger sight but not as bizarre as the previous lodgings in the port district of Leith, Edinburgh, where it stayed for more than a year, much to the amusement of locals. Spirit\u00a0V followed it there and stayed for almost as long. Not so amusing was the reported cost of berthing the ships in Scotland: $47,000 a\u00a0week, funded by Tasmanian taxpayers, and a\u00a0further $380,000 a month for crew.<\/p>\n
The two new ferries, bigger and better than the currently operating Spirit I and II, were touted as \u201cgame changers\u201d for Tasmania\u2019s tourism industry. Instead, they\u2019ve become emblematic of an epic blunder, as the state government forgot to build a berth large enough to accommodate the ferries in Devonport. That farcical oversight cost Liberal backbencher Michael Ferguson his role as deputy premier and minister for infrastructure and transport \u2013 though he has not denied speculation that he will vie for a federal Senate seat in 2028.<\/p>\n
The Dark Mofo team\u2019s proposal provided TT-Line the opportunity for some positive news at last. The fiasco plunged the beleaguered operator into debt, requiring a $506 million government bailout. The company ignored my questions about the costs of storing the ships in Melbourne and wouldn\u2019t confirm whether the new ferries would be fully operational by October 31.<\/p>\n
When I suggest that Dark Mofo solved a problem for the Tasmanian government, Twite is diplomatic: \u201cWe solved the problem for ourselves.\u201d The government is providing $21.6 million for the festival over three years to 2027, adding to the $30 million-plus that David Walsh \u2013 as the owner of the gallery, Mona, that spawned the festival \u2013 has forked out since its inaugural run in 2013.<\/p>\n
The \u201cproblem\u201d for Twite this year was the absence of a site large enough to accommodate Dark Park, the festival\u2019s free, sprawling, public art offering. In years past, it has covered the appealingly scrappy grounds of Macquarie Point, but now earthworks are about to start there for Hobart\u2019s AFL stadium \u2013 another Tasmanian government project mired in controversy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great part about Dark Park over the years has been wandering and discovering works over large areas, and so we\u2019ll be able to replicate that this time within the ship \u2026 it\u2019s so vast, each one of the pavilions is 180 metres. This will end up being one of the bigger Dark Parks, which is crazy,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can have 1600 people on the boat at any one time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dark Park will extend across the Port of Hobart this year, with artworks also installed in the huge waterfront warehouse MAC 02.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been one of the most complex events TasPorts has ever supported,\u201d says the state-owned company\u2019s interim chief executive, Allan Gray, via email. \u201cOpening a regulated port berth to the public is the maritime equivalent of running a festival on the tarmac at Sydney International Airport. The same level of security regulation applies, and for the same reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
This will be a hard act to follow, with Macquarie Point indefinitely out of bounds, and the ferries, with luck, fully operational next year. \u201cIt weighs very heavy on my mind, what we\u2019re going to do next year,\u201d Twite says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great thing about the art program is it\u2019s taken many different forms over the years,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe have some ideas; we\u2019re working through them \u2026 but it will mean a lot of sleepless nights while we try to find spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, he\u2019s relishing the chance of a\u00a0lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the world\u2019s biggest floating gallery,\u201d Twite says. \u201cI\u2019ll never do this again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dark Mofo runs in Hobart from June 11-22.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Twite can\u2019t believe his luck. Three years into his job as Dark Mofo\u2019s artistic director, his long-held…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-718656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}