Mike Parr: street art buried, hopefully not dead

Traffic came to a standstill last night as artist Mike Parr was interred beneath Hobart’s busiest street.

Last minute adjustments in the chamber. Performance artist Mike Parr enters the chamber he will live in for 72 hours under Macquarie Street Hobart. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Australia’s most audacious artwork — the interment last night of performance artist Mike Parr beneath Hobart’s busiest street — was originally conceived for a festival in Germany but shelved because of safety concerns.

Artist Mike Parr descends to the chamber to be encased for three days beneath Hobart's Macquarie St. Picture: AAP

Traffic came to a standstill last night as a portion of Macquarie Street outside Hobart City Hall was excavated for Underneath the Bitumen — the Artist Mike Parr, the 72-hour headline work at Hobart’s Dark Mofo winter arts festival. At 9pm Parr entered an open 4.5m x 1.7m x 2.2m steel box placed in the road. The lid was secured and the road relaid for traffic. On Sunday night, the street will be re-excavated and Parr released.

The 72-year-old artist told The Australian he had conceived the work — a monument to the victims of genocide — a decade ago for Nuremberg as part of the Documenta contemporary art festival, to which he had been invited, but its organisers had developed cold feet.

“I planned to be buried under the parade ground there but was eventually told it was just too dangerous … OH&S issues,” said Parr. “But (I had) no such problems in Hobart. I don’t think you’d get away with this anywhere else.”

The lid is placed above artist Mike Parr as he is encased beneath Hobart's Macquarie St. Picture: AAP

Parr will fast for the duration of the three-day performance and has with him only a copy of Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore, drawing utensils, a bucket, light and mattress. Air will be piped into the space via an underground vent.

Hobart City Council approved the work last month after months of negotiations between Dark Mofo — the Museum of Old and New Art’s midwinter arts jamboree — and Tasmania’s Detached cultural organisation, which commissioned the ­performance.

Council approvals have not been the project’s only challenge. A company originally tendered to make Parr’s box pulled out of the project once it became aware of its details, said Parr.

Dark Mofo constructed the box itself.

Crowds witness Hobart's Macquarie St being excavated to encase artist Mike Parr. Picture: AAP

The artist said Underneath the Bitumen was a monument to victims of 20th-century totalitarianism and a memorial to the colonial genocide of Aborigines perpetrated in Australia, and in particular in Tasmania, during the 19th century. Parr said Tasmania was an ideal home for his work. “These ideas cut to the bone (here). The ­audiences are very alert,” he said.