Launceston’s former Tafe campus, a stately redbrick that has stood empty for years on a leafy bend of the Tamar River, became a Mona Foma venue in the same way many buildings in Tasmania do: locals chatting about real estate. As soon as the heritage-listed building was sold for $6.35m in 2021, word immediately went around the small city and reached the ears of the annual arts and music festival.
“We said, ‘Oh my god, it has been bought! This is an opportunity’,” says Emma Pike, the senior curator at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart, which stages Mona Foma each summer. The festival, which has previously held performances and art installations in an old car museum, boatsheds, a former power station, an archery club and a hardware store, rushed to the Tafe buyer with a proposition: before any sprucing happened (a huge $50m redevelopment is planned), could they use it? Yes they could. For now, the daggy interiors remain un-spruced.
