Dark Mofo 2019: Mike Parr reflects on Towards a Black Square performance
Controversial Dark Mofo artist Mike Parr speaks about his latest work and the challenge of keeping his work provocative.
Lifestyle
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TASMANIA offers up performance art opportunities not possible elsewhere, says provocative Dark Mofo artist Mike Parr.
The enigmatic 74-year-old Sydney artist, who last year famously buried himself under Macquarie St in the centre of Hobart for 72 hours, spoke yesterday after the unveiling of this year’s performance piece.
For that, Parr was hidden away in an undisclosed location, blindly painting black squares on white walls.
Festival goers could see Parr’s performance via a live stream set up on the lower ground floor of the old Mercury building on Argyle St.
It was revealed yesterday that he was in fact in the same building, but one level above patrons.
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The Towards a Black Square performance went for 7.5 hours during which time Parr kept his eyes closed while he painted.
“It takes the square of bitumen from last year and takes it a step further,” he said.
“This work extends the provocation in that work last year, but it’s not so easily translated and more resistant. It requires a bit more thinking.”
Parr said the performance was disorientating.
“I got disoriented quite early in the piece and there was a moment in the performance where I started to feel my way. I didn’t know if I was getting out of room one and it was only when I got to the steps, they were a very useful architectural detail, so I knew then I was entering the third space and I’d been through all of them,” he said.
Parr was yet to see the fruits of his blind labour and said he would delay looking at his work.
“The audience are in possession of an experience of the work that I don’t have as the author,” he said.
“They become co-authors with me of this event and that’s an aspect of performance that interests me. The audience got something not even I as the artist got.”
Parr’s work will now be the inaugural exhibition for the Detached Gallery, on the ground level of the old Mercury building, which is now open to the public for the first time.
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He said his most recent works would only have been possible in Tasmania.
“Tasmania offers me opportunities that I’m not offered on the mainland — OHS and all kinds of ancillary considerations, right through to the way performance art is being assimilated into museum programs, I resist that kind of domestication in my performance work,” he said.
“I want to keep it always challenging, always provocative and dealing with issues that really take us to the bone of the matter.
“Hobart does offer that opportunity. It culminates a lot of work that’s been done in Hobart by David Walsh and Dark Mofo and by Penny Clive with the Detached Gallery.
“I was in Europe for a year and they all know about Dark Mofo and what’s happening in Tasmania, so it’s tremendous.”
When asked if he would return for next year’s Dark Mofo, Parr said it was “unlikely.”
“I think I’ve done my dash,” he said.
jessica.howard@news.com.au
TODAY’S PICKS:
*Dark and Dangerous Thoughts, 9.30am, Odeon Theatre
*Patrick Hall, If They Should Accidentally Fall, 10am — 6pm, Narryna Heritage Museum
*Lonnie Holley, Studio, 12—4pm, Altar
*Elizabeth, Gauci, California Girls, Captain Fighting Machine, 5pm — 12am (doors open 4.30pm), Altar
*Sharon Van Etten, 7—9pm (doors open 6pm), Odeon Theatre
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