Mike Parr reveals details on what is was like under one of Hobart’s busiest roads

PERFORMANCE artist Mike Parr has broken his silence over his subterranean Dark Mofo stunt, revealing exactly what went on while he was buried under Hobart’s busiest road. SEE THE GALLERY

PERFORMANCE artist Mike Parr has broken his silence over his subterranean Dark Mofo stunt, revealing exactly what went on while he was buried under Hobart’s busiest road.

Parr spent 72 hours interred inside a 4.5m-long container buried beneath the middle lane of Macquarie St — attracting praise from art lovers and criticism from sceptics — before emerging unscathed on Sunday night.

GALLERY: MIKE PARR BURIED UNDER THE ROAD

GALLERY: DARK MOFO 2018

About 200 people packed the School of Creative Arts’ Dechaineux Lecture Theatre yesterday to hear Parr speak about Underneath The Bitumen The Artist at a public forum also featuring Dark + Dangerous Thoughts director Laura Kroetsch, indigenous writer and researcher Greg Lehman, and curator Jarrod Rawlins.

Performance artist Mike Parr speaks about his latest work, Underneath The Bitumen which involved him being entombed under one of Hobart’s busiest roads for 72 hours. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

Parr said he spent much of his stint underground “walking back and forward — five steps forward, five steps back — at increasing speed, for hours at a time”. He also passed the time by writing and drawing in his notebook and reading Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore. He didn’t eat, but did manage to get some sleep.

“Then of course there was all the ferals in the early hours of the morning. It was sort of like playing chicken on a railway bridge — they’d run out between the (red traffic) lights and jump up and down as hard as they could on the top of the box. At 2 o’clock in the morning that was quite unnerving — but I thought ‘well, this is better than most art criticism’.”

Parr said he “was determined to go the distance” and complete the full 72 hours, and never worried about his safety “because I was thoroughly mentally prepared and so was Dark Mofo”. He showed no ill-effects from his performance yesterday, saying he “feels like a 73-year-old man should feel if they’re in good health and good spirits”.

The artist has been criticised for failing to acknowledge the crowd that had gathered on Sunday night to watch him emerge. But it seems that was the plan all along, as Parr “had proposed the null of the image” and “didn’t want to reanimate that null by being overtly a performer”.

Audience listening to performance artist Mike Parr speaking about his latest work, Underneath The Bitumen. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

“I was cold, and I was thinking of getting inside the Mercury building and going home and having a small meal,” he explained.

Parr said it had been “increasingly noisy” inside the box, which was fitted with a screen that allowed him to see a fixed view of Macquarie St above.

“By about 10pm Saturday it was deafening in the box,” he said. “And when the semis went over the top, everything was rattling — it’s going to be a fantastic soundtrack.

“Then of course there was all the ferals in the early hours of the morning. It was sort of like playing chicken on a railway bridge — they’d run out between the (red traffic) lights and jump up and down as hard as they could on the top of the box.

“At 2 o’clock in the morning that was quite unnerving — but I thought ‘well, this is better than most art criticism’.”

Parr also had a message for the “perennial” detractors who question the purpose or financial cost of his performances.

“Art always invites that sort of philistine response,” he said.

“When we bought (the Jackson Pollock painting) Blue Poles for $3m everyone jumped up and down and choked … and it’s now worth $380m.”

Under the Bitumen was billed as Parr’s third and final Dark Mofo performance, following on from 2016’s Asylum at Willow Court in New Norfolk and last year’s Empty Ocean on Bruny Island. But with Parr, you can never really be sure.

“Every performance I do now is my last performance, but I keep doing them,” he said.

“I never know what I’m going to do, and I don’t repeat performances. If I repeat performances, they become theatre.”