From Saturday 2 November to Sunday 8 December, visitors to Carriageworks will be able to see the presentation of video documentation from Parr’s performance BDH [Burning Down The House], 2016. This work was produced and presented by Carriageworks for the 2016 opening of the Biennale of Sydney exhibition at Carriageworks. In BDH [Burning Down The House], Parr set fire to an 18 x 12 metre grid of works from his print archive and their accompanying copper plates. Approximately $750,000 worth of the artist’s prints were methodically positioned in the Carriageworks traverser before being doused with petrol and incinerated. BDH [Burning Down The House] probes the role of art and the artist in a period where issues such as climate change and refugee policy have polarised communities and Governments globally.
The artist says, “once you compromise the future, the past becomes unbearable.”
“The runaway emissions of past decades have pushed average global temperatures to around 0.9C higher than they were prior to the industrial revolution. Enough atmospheric greenhouse gas now exists to push global average temperatures to 1.5C above the preindustrial average, even if all emissions stopped today. At 1.5C of warming, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will be dead, many coastal areas will be covered by the rising sea and the impacts on extreme weather will go from serious to devastating. At 2C of warming, the climate scientists warn, we will be at the threshold of climate disruption so severe that it may threaten global civilization.” Tim Flannery, The Guardian Weekly, 27 November – 3 December 2015
Visit The Eternal Opening at Carriageworks, 25 Oct – 8 Dec 2019.