Presented without comment: Artist Mike Parr emerges after three days entombed under busy Hobart street

Australian performance artist Mike Parr has resurfaced after spending 72 hours without food in a steel container buried beneath one of Hobart's busiest roads.

A cheering crowd met Parr, 72, as he climbed a ladder out of the container (4.5m x 1.7m x 2.2m) on Sunday night, three days after he was entombed in it on Thursday night.

Mike Parr emerges after spending three days buried underneath a road in Hobart.Credit: Melanie Kembrey

Parr's piece, Underneath the Bitumen the Artist, has seen Macquarie Street, outside Hobart's Town Hall, shut to traffic and excavated and resealed three times in the past two months.

For the three days that Parr was entombed traffic zoomed above him as per normal, with only a slight discolouration in the bitumen to mark the location where he was buried. Pedestrians were spotted jumping up and down, and posing for photographs, on the spot.

The descent: Mike Parr prepares to be buried.

On leaving the chamber, Parr walked without assistance towards a nearby building. He did not acknowledge the crowd, and he is expected to talk to the media on Tuesday.

For his time underground Parr had with him a copy of Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore, a sketchpad and pencils, a meditation stool, a waste bucket and water. He had been fasting in the days beforehand in preparation.

It's not the first time that one of Parr's pieces has captured attention. Known for his intense, and often violent, performances Parr has sewn his face up, nailed his arm to the wall and been splattered with his own blood.

"People sometimes say to me, 'Why are the performances so extreme'," he has previously told the Herald. "And I say they are the way they are because they enable me to think. But when I do the piece it is sort of cathartic and I am flooded with a kind of awareness that doesn't exist before the performance. It allows me to organise memories and experiences that can't be organised in the absence of doing those things."

Performance artist Mike Parr begins 72-hour entombment

Underneath the Bitumen the Artist was Parr's third and final piece for the Museum of Old and New Art's annual winter festival Dark Mofo, which sees tens of thousands of revellers flock to the state's capital.

At last year's festival Parr was joined by 72 seniors for a one-hour early morning performance at Bruny Island. In 2016, he did a 72-hour performance at the Willow Court Asylum in New Norfolk.

Parr had previously tried unsuccessfully to perform Underneath the Bitumen the Artist in other cities. Air was fanned into the chamber and a panic button installed, with organisers saying they could remove him in a matter of minutes if necessary.

The work has been described as a tribute to the victims of 20th century totalitarianism, and a monument to the Aboriginal victims of violence at the hands of British colonialism.

Although some Aboriginal Tasmanians have expressed concern they were not consulted about the project, supporters again flew the Aboriginal flag for his resurfacing as they had for his burial.

Dark Mofo's creative director Leigh Carmichael has previously said the piece was Tasmania's first monument referencing both the Black War and the convict system.

"The fact that Mike Parr's work will happen underground, just out sight, as everyday life continues above it, is clearly no coincidence. In my mind at least, this has already made the most poignant and profound statement imaginable."

Workers continued late into the night to fill Parr's vacated chamber with gravel, before starting to reseal the road across it.

Dark Mofo takes place in Hobart, Tasmania, until June 24.

Melanie Kembrey travelled to Tasmania courtesy of Dark Mofo.