Coffin rides help bring Dark Mofo festival back to life

The Dark Mofo festival is roaring back to life, offering brave punters a chance to lie in a coffin.

Artist Simon Zoric's Coffin Rides performance piece in Hobart resulted from the realisation that humans spend more time lying in these six-foot boxes after death than they do being alive.

"I find it strange that you would spend all this time in a coffin but never know what it felt like," Zoric said.

Early figures show Dark Mofo has already welcomed 210,000 visitors, an improvement of some 30,000 on the first week of the festival's last full-scale program in 2023.

The event took a little lie down itself in 2024 to contend with a massive hike in production costs, but the first few days of the 2025 festival show Hobart's main winter attraction is back at full force.

"I do think interest this year is very strong, and perhaps last year had something to do with that," Dark Mofo executive director Melissa Edwards said.

Attendance peaked at more than 16,000 people Saturday evening, and artistic director Chris Twite says the feedback so far has been great.

"I get a chance to talk to people on the street and see the city alive and full," he said at a media event on Thursday.

"I think a lot of people are really excited - locals and businesses and tourists."

The excitement is happening under the eyes of an unmissable five-metre-high giant hand/face sculpture affixed to the roof of a hotel on the Hobart waterfront.

Ronnie Van Hout's sculpture Quasi was controversial during its original installation in Christchurch - it looks a little bit like Donald Trump, or possibly Elon Musk - and it is yet to be seen whether the artwork will meet with the general approval of Hobartians.

An exhibition at MONA by artist Arcangelo Sassolino has attracted more than 11,000 people across four days to see liquid steel - heated to 1500C - showering from the ceiling of a darkened gallery.

The festival's second week features DIIV and The Horrors at Hobart's Odeon Theatre, and Methyl Ethel at the Princess Theatre in Launceston.

Also still to come are the traditional winter feast and Ogoh Ogoh procession, during which a giant model Maugean skate is set on fire, followed by the Nude Solstice Swim on June 21.