| Parr Mike Parr | |
| Field: | Performance |
| Training: | National Art School, Australia |
Mike Parr is an Australian performance artist and printmaker and Painter. Parr's works have been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including in Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.
In the 1970s, he co-founded the artist cooperative Inhibodress with Peter Kennedy and Tim Johnson.
Parr spent his childhood in rural Queensland. He is the brother of installation/photography artist, Julie Rrap (formerly Julie Brown-Rrap). He was born with a misshapen arm, and this physical characteristic has featured within his art work.
Parr commenced an arts/law degree at the University of Queensland in 1965, but discontinued his studies the following year. He moved to Sydney and, in 1968, briefly enrolled at the National Art School to study painting.
In 1970, with Peter Kennedy (born 1945[1]) and Tim Johnson, Parr established "Inhibodress", an artist cooperative and alternative space for conceptual art, performance art and video art, after the Tin Sheds had paved the way for such spaces.[2] It was an important space for artists from 1971 to 1972.[3]
Parr's performances explore physical limits, memory and subjectivity. They often depict self-mutilation or extreme physical feats (as in the case of 100 Breaths[4]). The performances are documented photographically and on video.
Parr has been represented by the Anna Schwartz Gallery (owned by the wife of publisher Morry Schwartz) since around 1987, but she terminated the relationship from after the close of his exhibition Sunset Claws,[5] on 16 December 2023.[6] His contract was terminated in an email on the morning following a performance called "Going Home" on Saturday 2 December, in which he referenced the Israel-Hamas war. The four-and-a-half-hour performance involved Parr painting words on the gallery walls with his eyes shut. His painted text was drawn from the London Review of Books, Guardian Australia, as well as various unattributed quotes. Schwartz, who is Jewish, issued a statement later saying "Sadly I ended the association between Anna Schwartz Gallery and Mike Parr due to a serious breach of trust and difference of values". The action has led to a wider debate about censoring artists.[7] Speaking on RN Breakfast, Schwarz said that she thought Parr was "the greatest artist this country has ever and perhaps will ever produce", and that she was not censoring his work. What she had objected to in particular was using the word "Nazi" and the word "Israel" on the wall together, which made her feel sick, and she also felt personally hurt by Parr.[8]
Parr's early works were designed to get a reaction from the audience, though he also focused on exploring questions of identity, memory, and states of being. He particularly used his body as a performative tool, often using his prosthetic arm and testing the physical limits of his body through endurance challenges.[9]
For one of Parr's earlier works, he sat in front of his audience and began talking to them in a conversational manner, then very suddenly brandishes an axe and begins hacking into his prosthetic arm which he had filled with minced meat and fake blood. Most of the people in the audience were not aware of his disability, and therefore shock factor was the main aim.
In the late 60s, Parr's performances were started with "psychotic" episodes in which he cut and attacked his body, which he cites as "psychotic operation(s)".
In 1971 he began to write his book Programmes & Investigations, in which he recorded grotesque performance ideas, including letting a dog drink the performer's blood and sewing a fish onto one's skin.[10] By 1973, he had listed over 150 different ideas, performing the actions as he wrote them down, and it became the basis for his activity for more than a decade.
In 1981 Parr stopped performing and began painting and printmaking, later returning to performance art in the 90s.
In 2002, Parr's most challenging performance, "For Water from the Mouth" was held at the gallery Artspace – a work of ten whole days where Parr was isolated in a room with no human contact, and nothing but water to keep him alive. His every action was surveyed by surveillance cameras and broadcast live on the Internet for 24 hours a day.
"A stitch in time" was another of his performances, a live web cam showing Parr having his lips and face extensively stitched with thread into a caricature of shame.
In 2003, one of Parr's extended performances was as live web broadcast received more than 250,000 hits in the first 24 hours alone. For 30 hours Parr sat in a gallery (again at Artspace) with his non-prosthetic arm nailed to the wall in opposition to the Australia government's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. This was called "Malevich (A Political Arm)".
In June, 2018, he had himself interred in a room constructed below a street in Hobart, Tasmania, for 72 hours, sustained only by water and soup. This was to highlight the fate of Aboriginal Tasmanians, among other issues. Metaphorically, the issues (as represented by Parr) are buried but are still there, ready to resurface at inconvenient times; including colonialism and communal and personal histories.
His work was included in the March 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, which is titled "Monster Theatres".[11] [12]
Selected Solo Exhibitions
Cloacal Corridor (O Vio Prote/O Vio Proto/O Vio Loto/O Thethe) Self Portrait as a Pair or Self Portrait as a Pun, drawing installation; Identification Number 1 (Rib Markings in the Carnarvon Ranges, North-West Queensland), January 1975, photoseriesScreenings of Rules and Displacement Activities Parts I, II and III; Performance presentation from George Brecht's WaterYam, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Curator: Barbara CampbellDrawings, Art Projects, Melbourne
3 Installations, City Gallery, Melbourne; Mike Parr, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, SydneySurvey of Recent Work, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth
Black Mirror/Pale Fire, Various Routes, Whistle/White, 3 performances, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Echolalia (the road): Prints from the Self Portrait Project: Mike Parr 1987–1994, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne100 Breaths/100 Songs from (ALPHABET/ HAEMORRHAGE) Black Box of 100 Self Portrait Etchings 5, 1993–1994, performance, Art Gallery of South Australia, AdelaideFathers 11 (The Law of the Image), installation, Experimental Art Foundation, AdelaideThe Bridge, performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Day Break, performance, Scene Shop at the Cultural Centre of Manila, Manila
Head on a Plate, New York Studio School, New YorkThe White Hybrid (Fading), performance, Artspace, Cowper Wharf/Artspace, SydneyUnword, performance, University of Western Australia
Female Factory, 7 hour performance, 25.4 Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, MelbourneBlood Box, 24-hour performance, 6.9/7.9, Artspace, SydneyBoubialla Couta, (performance), College of Fine Arts, SydneyThe Rest of Time, Sherman Galleries Goodhope, SydneyMike Parr, Sherman Galleries Hargrave, SydneyPhoto-Realism, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Wrong Face, Anna Schwartz Gallery, MelbourneThree Collaborations, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney
Shallow Grave, 3-day performance, 7.7–9.7 12th Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
John Kaldor Art Project 2: Szeemann: I want to leave a nice welldone child here (20 Australian Artists), Bonython Gallery, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Recent Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Tall Poppies, an exhibition of five pictures, University Art Gallery, University of MelbourneD'un autre continent 'L'Australie, Le réve et le réel', ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Australian Perspecta 85,Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Origins, Originality & Beyond, The Sixth Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay, Sydney
Edge to Edge: Australian Contemporary Art to Japan, National Museum of Art, Osaka; Old and New Hara Museums, Tokyo; Nagoya City Museum, Nagoya; Hokkaido Museum, Sapporo
Spirit & Place: Art in Australia 1861–1996, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Body, Art Gallery of New South WalesIn Place (Out of Time): Contemporary Art in Australia, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Southern Reflections: An Exhibition of Contemporary Australian Art to Northern Europe, Kulturhaus, Stockholm, Sweden; Konathallen Götsberg, Gothenburg, Sweden; Arhus Konstmuseum, Arhus, Denmark; Museum Tamminiementle (City Art Museum), Helsinki; Neues Museum, Bremen, Germany; Staatliche Sammlung für Kunst, Chemnitz, East GermanyTelling Tales, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Five Continents and One City. Curator: Gao Minglu, Mexico City Gallery, Mexico The Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool, UKGlobal Conceptualism: Points of Origin, Queens Museum, The Walker Art Centre, Miami Art Centre and other American Museums, 1999/00
National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, all state and many regional galleries, tertiary collections, the National Library in Canberra, Parliament House, Canberra, Chartwell Collection in New Zealand, Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, First National Bank in Chicago, The Michael Buxton Contemporary Australian Art Collection, Art Gallery of Ballarat