Mona Foma has today announced Kae Tempest, Bikini Kill, Angel Olsen, The Chills, Perturbator and Peaches will play Hobart or Launceston shows as part of the 2023 festival.
Building on its already impressive 2023 lineup, Mona Foma has announced Kae Tempest, Bikini Kill, Angel Olsen, The Chills, Perturbator and Peaches are set to join Pavement and Bon Iver on the lineup for Mona Sessions in Nipaluna / Hobart from 24 – 26 February.
The festival will run from 17 February, kicking off in Launceston, with each evening showcasing a mixture of music on the Mona lawns or Launceston’s new festival hub housed in a decommissioned Tafe.
Mona Foma Festival Dates
- Launceston 17-19 February 2023
- Nipaluna / Hobart 24-26 February 2023
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In Launceston; Perturbator, The Chills and Kae Tempest will take to the stage for the Old Tafe Sessions in Mona Foma’s new festival hub for 2023. These performances will occur from 17 – 19 February, with full lineups for all sessions in both cities still to come.
Saturday 18 February sees the return of British writer and musician, Kae Tempest after scorching Mona Foma audiences with their incendiary 2016 performance. The lyrical hip-hop poet has twice been nominated for the Mercury Prize and will showcase songs from their latest album, The Line is a Curve.
The final night of the Old Tafe Sessions features Paris-based artist Perturbator on Sunday 19 February. Perturbator will perform tracks from his recent album, Lustful Sacraments, taking influences from post-punk and goth from the 1980s and early 1990s, while retaining the oppressive, dark electronic tones he’s well-known for.
Mid-week, indie-folk icons Bon Iver will play Hobart’s MyState Bank Arena on Tuesday February 21.
Kicking off the following weekend of Mona Sessions in Nipaluna/Hobart on Friday 24 February is electropop provocateur Peaches, with the 20-year anniversary celebration of her seminal album The Teaches of Peaches. Last seen on Mona Foma stages in 2017 with Peaches Christ Superstar, the feminist icon promises to turn the stage into her personal playground as she aims to ‘Fuck the Pain Away’.
Saturday 25 February sees Pavement, one of the most popular and influential bands to come out of the American underground, closing out the summer festival as part of their first tour Down Under since 2010, followed closely by a set from Missouri singer-songwriter Angel Olsen, performing songs from her new album Big Time.
After two years of Covid complications, Mona Foma Artistic Director Brian Ritchie said: “Mona Foma’s Covid policy was innovative programming with Tasmanian and a handful of so-called mainland performers for the past few years. Ready or not, here we come.
“We are effusively launching back into international artists big-time in 2023. The intellectual, spiritual, and partying life of Tasmania cannot help but be enriched by such a diverse range of artists as renaissance person Kae Tempest, provocateur Peaches and her raunchy mob, storyteller Angel Olsen, pioneers and forerunners Bikini Kill, venerable Antipodean philosophers, The Chills and the enveloping miasma of Perturbator. This in addition to already announced Bon Iver and Pavement, plus a whole lot more to come. Stay tuned.”
Tickets for both the Old Tafe Sessions in Launceston and Mona Sessions in nipaluna / Hobart are on sale at 9am on Monday 24 October, grab them here.
This article was made in partnership with MONA.
