The festival in Hobart, Tasmania hots up with massage on the gallery lawns and sonic terrorism on the waterfront

Read our report from day one of Mofo

After three days at Mofo it was time to visit its nerve centre: the Museum of New and Old Art, or Mona for short, the biggest private gallery in the southern hemisphere, built by and housing the art collection of David Walsh. Getting there involves taking a ferry across the harbour and then climbing 91 steps to the mirrored entrance – the gallery itself is subterranean, cut into the cliff. Some of the walls inside are still raw, jagged rocks. Apparently, Walsh was inspired by the underground car park in Sydney's King's Cross (which currently houses the Alaska Projects gallery).

I'd heard mixed reports about Mofa. I interviewed Vampire Weekend the other week and they loved how individual it is, and how much it expresses Walsh's taste and personality, but one friend said, essentially, "great gallery, shame about the art". I have to say that there are aspects of the permanent collection that I find offputting – works like Wim Delvoye's Cloaca (a room-sized shit-making machine) and Mat Collishaw's Bullet Hole now seem macho, flashy and a bit dated – but there is a really wonderful Anselm Kiefer sculpture, Sternenfall/Shevirath ha Kelim which to me was worth the journey on its own.

Sternenfall/Shevirath ha Kelim, an Anselm Kiefer at the edge of the world #mofo14 pic.twitter.com/HAu7fAzjxs

It is, as everyone says, a remarkable building, and it's interesting to see art shown in darkened rooms – in fact, it's the first time I've really experienced a gallery that since the South Bank iteration of the Saatchi gallery in London. The atmosphere has a tinge of the oppressive, and makes scary art even more sinister.

To coincide with Mofo, there are three new exhibitions, all of which are worth seeing. The first is by the French artist Hubert Duprat, known for encrusting the larvae of the caddisfly in gold and jewels – making for weirdly reverent, slightly cruel and definitely interesting art. The second show is by Roger Ballen, born in New York but South African-based. Festering in a few dark corners in the gallery, it features nightmarish imagery of birds and incarceration, and a truly alarming installation called Asylum, a grotto-like room with models of children which has the atmosphere of a serial killer's lair.

The biggest show is called The Red Queen, a group exhibition which aims to interrogate why people make art. The most popular work seemed to be some wacky tennis tables by Wang Jianwei, which despite the fact the one of them is shaped like a concertina, were in use by gallerygoers. The rest of the show – for which 12 new works were commissioned – is conceptually a bit confusing, but does contain some wonderful work.

It was great to reacquaint myself with Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary, which I haven't seen since it was part of Saatchi's 1997 show Sensation (it reappeared at Tate Modern for Ofili's retrospective in 2010) – one of the most controversial artworks of all time. Coming across it unexpectedly, with the ructions it inspired in New York now a distant memory, it felt like an old friend: to me, an earthy (no wonder, since it's decked out with elephant shit and pictures from porn mags), human reinterpretation of an untouchable icon rather than something sacrilegious.

It was also fantastic to be able to experience Lindsay Seers's installation Nowhere Less Now?, which I missed when it was in the UK last but which has an Australian connection – read this brilliant Rachel Cooke piece about it to find out more. I was also very struck by Tessa Farmer's The Depraved Pursuit of a Possum which takes taxidermy as art to new extremes. As well as the titular possum, Farmer has stuffed and strung from the ceiling individual bees in a striking installation with a complex message involving (as I understood it) the environment and our plundering relationship to nature.

This is just to scratch the surface – I spent three hours in the gallery (somehow missing the famous wall of vaginas) and could happily have looked for much longer, but I emerged to the surface to explore the various goings-on happening on the gallery lawn at the back. The atmosphere was somewhere between – and I apologise for using such UK-centric comparisons – the healing fields at Glastonbury and the Frieze art fair. There were posh artisan food stalls, massage tents, a band playing world music, an "oyster mausoleum" (part of an installation made by architecture students) and some strange pointy wooden teepees. Talks, too – I put my head inside the sweltering Think Tent to find a discussion taking place about the phases of the moon and its effect on us. One woman said that she used to work for a political party, and the nuttiest calls from the general public would always happen when the moon was full. I was dying to know which party – the Liberals I hope.

My favourite thing was a tent which appeared to be made from old jeans, and which was carpeted with a quilt made from jeans back pockets. Nolen Alderfox, the very nice man inside, told me that it was called The Exquisite Corpse Cafe, an installation by Daphne Park inspired by the work of pioneering psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. While it didn't have quite as dramatic an effect as one of Reich's orgone accumulators, Alderfox did give me a very nice massage – a pleasant experience in a weird denim cave on the lawn of a very strange gallery.

One last note on Mona: much as I liked the fact that your guide comes on an iPod rather than via explanatory signs on the walls, is it really necessary to bill the description of the works as "art wank"? Or am I just being a prissy pom?

After that I reluctantly got the ferry back to Hobart and Foma, where I caught the third of four daily live performances of Conrad Shawcross's The Ada Project. I've reviewed that here, but the potted version is that Mylo's piece of music was, for my money (and I suspect Shawcross's, too) the best. The Scottish dance maestro is playing tonight – I'm looking forward to seeing him.

I was sorry to miss the Julie Ruin – you can read a great Everett True interview with Kathleen Hanna here, incidentally. If Twitter is anything to go by, they were great.

Thx @kathleenhanna, loved you in the 90s, love you still. Amazing performance by @thejulieruin @MONAFOMA #MOFO2014 pic.twitter.com/ahaI2axviR

I dipped in and out of Matmos, who I've never really got, even though I love the album they made with Björk, Vespertine; a lot of my friends like them; and this somewhat NSFW interview with them contains one of the all-time great groupie anecdotes. I'll remember this set as it's surely the only one I'll ever see with a song inspired by – and it has to be said sounding like – a blocked drain. My colleague Helen Davidson reviewed the Sydney show they played a couple of days beforehand here. One more Matmos thought – however experimental and unconventional they are, they still have the "one boffin, one street kid" dynamic of all great synth duos from the Pet Shop Boys to Daft Punk.

Outside the venue, a group of local blacksmiths were making what looked like an ornate chimney, their crashing and hammering being sampled by the electronic musician Nick Smithies and played back over the PA. It was impressive (the skill of the blacksmiths more than the sound), but also made me think that just because you can make a tune out of anything, it doesn't mean that you necessarily should.

The Mebourne dance artist Roland Tings did a good job of bringing some hedonistic rave atmosphere to the cavernous main venue. Streamlined, minimal and relentless, he got the audience on their feet – though the crowd dwindled towards the end – and his own dance moves injected some personality into a set which could have seemed anonymous.

I was flagging a bit by the time the final artist, Robin Fox, performed. His set consisted of admittedly impressive lasers accompanied by doomy ambient rumblings. Some guys behind me were enjoying doing some interpretive dance to it, but I have to say that it left me yearning to hear an actual tune.

Fortunately, tunes were in abundance at Faux Mo, the afterhours club, and I finished Saturday raving to Stereogamous's housey set. Tonight I'm looking forward to John Grant and the hilarious-sounding Client Liason. Tweet me @alexneedham74 if you're here, and tell me what you've been seeing too.

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