There Is Nothing You Need To Do In Here: Wheat field takes over CBD office in new immersive art installation

A wheat field is taking over a Perth CBD office building and a Subiaco building as part of a new public art installation designed to give city workers and visitors a chance to pause and reconnect with a landscape beyond the CBD.

There Is Nothing You Need To Do In Here is a free four-week immersive installation transforming an office space at 1 Mill Street in Perth into a sensory landscape inspired by WA’s Wheatbelt.

Visitors can walk through hundreds of thousands of wheat stems beneath the office’s fluorescent lights while an immersive soundscape plays, designed to create a contrast between the quiet of the wheatbelt and the commercial environment of the CBD.

It explores the themes of labour, memory, place, regional identity and society’s increasingly disconnected relationship with nature.

The installation is the first project by non-for-profit Wongan Hills Arts Co. Ltd , which aims to strengthen connections between metro audiences and regional WA through contemporary art.

WHAC founder Alex Miller said the decision to put a wheat field inside an office building was deliberately absurd.

“Well why not put a wheat field in an office building? It is fundamentally out of place and obviously absurd, but so is spending a good part of your life surrounded by concrete and glass and calling it normal,” he said.

“Beyond that, the meaning is open. We’re not particularly interested in telling people what to think. We’d rather give them something to think about.”

WHAC director Matt Di costa said the project was intended to be more than a traditional gallery experience.

“Perth is in need of more than gallery art. We are building a destination, one that connects us to forgotten landscapes outside of our capital city,” he said.

“This first project not only acts as a sensory space for busy city minds but as a first window into a new connection between art and place.”

The installation is on from September 11 to October 11, 11am to 2pm Mondays to Fridays and from noon to 5pm weekends.