WESTERN LUTRUWITA.- One of Australia’s most distinctive and daring cultural festivals, The Unconformity returns to the rugged West Coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania from 16–19 October 2025, unveiling a bold new program of place-responsive contemporary art events, live music, and transformative communal experiences. A mix of local and statewide artists play the festival’s free live music stage, headlined by iconic Australian rock band Spiderbait and art rock supergroup Bleak Squad, performing in Queenstown for the first time.

The 2025 program features 60 events – including the world premiere of 18 new commissions – offering large-scale installations, performances, music, dance, ceremony, and critical conversations. It showcases 121 artists from across Australia and the Asia-Pacific alongside West Coast and Palawa creatives. With over 80% of the program free and a No Barriers: Pay It Forward* ticketing initiative, The Unconformity 2025 reinforces its commitment to cultural accessibility, inclusion, and community generosity.

From semaphore signals at dawn and artworks etched in Queenstown’s famous acidic orange river to rogue late-night sonic experiments with headliner cameos, and a fierce football match played on gravel, The Unconformity is a festival that defies definition. One deeply rooted in the West Coast – shaped by place, people, and an uncompromising creative spirit.

Festival-goers can experience this year’s works across 46 venues throughout Queenstown, from local shopfronts and a historic Art Deco theatre to artists’ homes and studios and the West Coast’s remarkable wilderness. Crib Road returns as the festival’s beating heart – a vibrant outdoor precinct with food and drink, free live music and community gatherings along Queenstown’s main street.

This year’s thematic invitation to ‘respawn’ captures a spirit of renewal, resistance, and cyclical return. “To respawn reflects the energy of regeneration we feel so strongly here – whether in the land, in culture, or in ourselves,” said Loren Kronemyer, Artistic Director, The Unconformity.

“We may be a festival at the end of the world, but we’re always asking: what will be born the day after? How can we nourish this ground and nurture the green shoots that grow towards the light? The 2025 program is our collective response to those questions, offering up new work that is entirely inspired by this singular context. Every artwork is offered with the intention of honouring what is remarkable about the West Coast.”

CEO Louisa Gordon welcomes visitors to explore the festival’s 2025 program that marks 15 years of site-responsive creativity and regenerative cultural development for the organisation.

“Festivals like The Unconformity create powerful shared moments in time – connecting artists, audiences and communities in place,” said Louisa Gordon, CEO, The Unconformity. “We’re proud to build on the legacy of this extraordinary organisation while opening new pathways for cultural dialogue and creative risk-taking in this ancient and resilient landscape.”

Tasmanian Minister for Tourism, Hospitality and Events Jane Howlett said The Unconformity celebrates the West Coast's uniqueness, its landscape, extraordinary stories, the people and their heritage.

“Congratulations to The Unconformity CEO Louisa Gordon and Artistic Director Loren Kronemyer, who, through this festival program, are demonstrating how place-based cultural leadership can foster local pride, national engagement and international exchange. The Unconformity continues to honour the spirit of the West Coast and is a drawcard for local visitors and tourists alike.”

Over the past fifteen years, Chairperson Rick Snell has seen The Unconformity evolve from a grassroots community group to an arts organisation forging new cultural frontiers on the wild and mountainous western edge of Lutruwita/Tasmania, with the biennial multi-arts festival as its signature event.

“Every festival is a convergence of ideas, passion, art, emotion and hope. In this iteration, we build on the past, dream of bold futures and defy the limitations of isolation, terrain and the elements. For four days, we invite audiences to embrace everything that shapes The Unconformity – and let our unconformities inspire yours,” said Rick Snell, Chairperson, The Unconformity.

VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS

Throughout the festival, The Unconformity presents participatory and place-responsive artworks that honour memory, identity, and the transformative power of community.

• In Fell, performance artist Luke George enters a state of suspended motion with a log equal to his body weight, evoking the reciprocal relationships between people and forests.

• Bridget Baskerville’s kinetic sculpture Overflow sees copper plates etched by the acidic flow of the Queen River, marking time, memory and environmental change.

• Jessee Lee Johns invites audiences to enter the Commonwealth of New Bayswater—a fictional micro-nation with its own economy, where creative collaboration and civic participation meet.

• Jeweller Emma Bugg invites young people to contribute charms to Elemental Memories, a monumental, ever-growing necklace that will spill into the street, weaving together community stories as a continuation of a multi-year project.

• In Rise Up When She Calls, Uncle Jimmy Everett Puralia Meenamatta, Ruth Langford and the Lutruwita Art Orchestra lead a powerful ceremony for Country performed in and for the landscape.

• Jewelled Nights reimagines Tasmania’s first major feature film 100 years on—honouring female icons Marie Bjelke-Petersen and Louise Lovely through participatory performance, archival fragments and physical culture classes.

• Mature Artists Dance Experience (MADE) perform Weaving Vibrant, a moving exploration of women as storytellers and weavers, flowing daily along Orr Street.

• In What Water Could Remember, Indonesian artist Arif Furqan links Queenstown with Waduk Gajah Mungkur through stories of damming, displacement and resilience—told through archival film, fabric projections and local voices.

• Malaysian artist Tony Yap performs Panjat Hujan (“Climbing the Rain”), a transcultural ritual drawing on Bugis shamanistic traditions and contemporary dance to explore resilience, spirit and survival.

• Aboriginal artists Theresa Sainty and Zoe Rimmer invite the public to contribute to Kani mina milaythina-nanya?—a collaborative basket and cultural exchange that begins by asking: where are you from?

FESTIVAL FAVOURITES RETURN

Festival-goers are invited to welcome the first light of the festival with the dawn hike Unrise, in which artists Theresa Sainty and A Published Event join forces to share Semaphore Score as an opening call to Country in palawa kani. This coded statement will be relayed across Mount Owen and Queenstown via signalers waving botanical-dyed flags.

Encounter over 60 West Coast artists along The Unconformity Art Trail where works range from prize-winning paintings, Huon Pine wares, photography and ceramics to sculptures wrought from recycled local copper. Having grown since 2016, this cornerstone event continues to surprise visitors with works exhibited – and many for sale – in businesses, shopfronts and public spaces as well as unexpected and secret spaces within Queenstown.

Moonland is the festival’s hub for talks, readings, workshops and reflection, offering a space to share stories of place and a daytime reading room for discovery and rest. As a guest speaker, Uncle Jimmy Everett Puralia Meenamatta will share unique perspectives on art, regeneration, and nurturing the future.

The festival’s grand finale is The Unconformity Cup: a uniquely Queenstown sporting event that pits artists and athletes against the elements in a gladiatorial all-gender football match played on Queenstown’s unforgiving gravel oval. Think ‘grassroots footy without the grass’, where The West has a score to settle with The Rest to bring the Cup back home.