Full article from this weekend’s Mercury, click here.
Dark Mofo’s presence at Willow Court will include a “site activation”, with food vans and the like setting up around New Norfolk to help create a festival atmosphere in the Derwent Valley town.
Local shops will also decorate their frontages with mirrors in reference to Mike Parr’s work.
Willow Court was only closed in 2001, a surprisingly recent end for the institution-style mental-health facility, which housed its first patients way back in 1827.
It is still an intimidating and, in parts, unnerving building, its complicated history occupying a similarly complicated place in the minds of people who have some connection with it, or who lived in the community when it was operating.
Curator Jarrod Rawlins says the local community is supportive of the project and great care has been taken to be respectful of the site’s history.
“And it is also a great thing for a small community like New Norfolk to have such a big, important, international artist doing a project there,” he says.
“These things normally find themselves at places like the Sydney Biennale or other big cities and central places.
“But this is being done in this spot because of the site, and people will come because of that.
“And up there in winter it’s beautiful – the cold air, a bit of fog. If the interstate visitor wanted the drama of Tasmania in the winter, that has to be New Norfolk. And being free, people don’t have to think too hard, they can just go.”
Entry to Asylum is free. Open 24 hours a day, from Thursday, June 9, to Sunday, June 12 (by appointment after dark; register online). Open noon-4pm on Monday, June 13, and from noon-4pm on Saturday, June 18, and Sunday, June 19.
Entry by Mirror Only, performed in Asylum, will start at noon on Thursday, June 9, and go for 72 hours. To enter, bring a mirror – which you will leave behind. darkmofo.net.au/asylum