Mike Parr
Encyclopedia
Mike Parr is an Australia
n performance artist and printmaker. Parr's works have been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including in Brazil
, Cuba
, France
, Germany
, Hungary
, Japan
, Korea
, Taiwan
and the United States
.
. 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 is the brother of installation
/photography
artist, Julie Rrap (formerly Julie Brown-Rrap).
Parr moved to Sydney
and, in 1968, briefly enrolled at the National Art School to study painting. In 1970, with Peter Kennedy, he established "Inhibodress", an artists' cooperative and alternative space for conceptual art, performance art and video.
Parr's print making is a striking contrast, both emotionally and visually to his video/installation work, consisting of beautiful etchings featuring a barrage of raw and spiky lines. Parr has been fascinated with observation and the possibilities and responses of memory distortions. His "landscape" prints are such depictions - memories of views passed by.
Of his reasons, he states "I started drawing in 1981 because around that time I stopped doing the body art performances that I'd done throughout the 1970s." though later he returned to physical performance.
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, without anything but water to keep him alive. His every action surveyed by video cameras and web cams, 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 only arm nailed to the wall. This was called "Malevich (A Political Arm)".
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, photoseries
Screenings of Rules and Displacement Activities Parts I, II and III; Performance presentation from George Brecht's WaterYam, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Curator: Barbara Campbell
Drawings, Art Projects, Melbourne
3 Installations, City Gallery, Melbourne; Mike Parr, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Survey 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, Melbourne
100 Breaths/100 Songs from (ALPHABET/ HAEMORRHAGE) Black Box of 100 Self Portrait Etchings 5, 1993–1994, performance, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Fathers 11 (The Law of the Image), installation, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
The 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 York
The White Hybrid (Fading), performance, Artspace, Cowper Wharf/Artspace, Sydney
Unword, performance, University of Western Australia
Female Factory, 7 hour performance, 25.4 Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
Blood Box, 24 hour performance, 6.9/7.9, Artspace, Sydney
Boubialla Couta, (performance), College of Fine Arts, Sydney
The Rest of Time, Sherman Galleries Goodhope, Sydney
Mike Parr, Sherman Galleries Hargrave, Sydney
Photo-Realism, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Wrong Face, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Three 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 Melbourne
D'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 Wales
In 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 Germany
Telling 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, UK
Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, Queens Museum, The Walker Art Centre, Miami Art Centre and other American Museums, 1999/00
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n performance artist and printmaker. Parr's works have been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Early life
Parr spent his childhood in rural QueenslandQueensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
. 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 is the brother of installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
/photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
artist, Julie Rrap (formerly Julie Brown-Rrap).
Parr moved to Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
and, in 1968, briefly enrolled at the National Art School to study painting. In 1970, with Peter Kennedy, he established "Inhibodress", an artists' cooperative and alternative space for conceptual art, performance art and video.
Career
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). The performances are documented photographically and on video.Parr's print making is a striking contrast, both emotionally and visually to his video/installation work, consisting of beautiful etchings featuring a barrage of raw and spiky lines. Parr has been fascinated with observation and the possibilities and responses of memory distortions. His "landscape" prints are such depictions - memories of views passed by.
Of his reasons, he states "I started drawing in 1981 because around that time I stopped doing the body art performances that I'd done throughout the 1970s." though later he returned to physical performance.
Works
Parr's early works were designed to get a reaction from the audience one of Parr's earlier works, he sits in front of his audience and begins talking to them. Most of the people in the audience have no idea that he has one prosthetic arm. Suddenly he gets out an axe and begins hacking into his prosthetic arm which he has filled with minced meat and fake blood.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, without anything but water to keep him alive. His every action surveyed by video cameras and web cams, 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 only arm nailed to the wall. This was called "Malevich (A Political Arm)".
Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions- 1970 Light Pieces & Painted Constructions, Reid Gallery, Brisbane
- 1972-3 Trans-Art 1: Idea Demonstrations (with Peter Kennedy), Inhibodress Gallery, Sydney; Veste Sagrada and Museo de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- 1973 Performance, Actions, Videosystems, Galerie Impact, Lausanne; Galerie Media, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- 1978 Screening of Rules and Displacement Activities Parts I and II, lectures, Bela Balaczs Studio for Experimental Film, Budapest, Hungary
- 1983 Black Box: The Theatre of Self Correction, Part 2, The Performance Space, Sydney
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, photoseries
Screenings of Rules and Displacement Activities Parts I, II and III; Performance presentation from George Brecht's WaterYam, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Curator: Barbara Campbell
Drawings, Art Projects, Melbourne
- 1984 Towards the Other Side (Self Quotations), three drawing series, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Gallery, Melbourne. Curator: John Smithies
- 1985 Portage, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; Fine Art Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart
- 1986 The Parting of the Red Sea, Siegal Contemporary Art Inc., New York
- 1989 Mike Parr, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, June; City Gallery, Melbourne, July; Milburn + Arté Gallery, Brisbane
- 1990 I think of Drypoint in terms of Braille and Excavation, survey of prints from 1988–1990, The Drill Hall Gallery, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
- 1991 Mike Parr, Artist in Residence 1990-1991, Ian Potter Gallery, The University of Melbourne Museum of Art, Melbourne
3 Installations, City Gallery, Melbourne; Mike Parr, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Survey of Recent Work, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth
- 1992 Alphabet/Haemorrhage, 17 performances, Arthouse, Perth, 3 April; 4 performances, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 6 May; 4 performances, City Gallery, Melbourne, 13 June; 9 performances, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 4 August
- 1993 Mike Parr, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, September
Black Mirror/Pale Fire, Various Routes, Whistle/White, 3 performances, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1994 Mike Parr, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Echolalia (the road): Prints from the Self Portrait Project: Mike Parr 1987-1994, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
100 Breaths/100 Songs from (ALPHABET/ HAEMORRHAGE) Black Box of 100 Self Portrait Etchings 5, 1993–1994, performance, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Fathers 11 (The Law of the Image), installation, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
The Bridge, performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1995 The Illusion of the End, Sherman Galleries Goodhope and Hargrave, Sydney
Day Break, performance, Scene Shop at the Cultural Centre of Manila, Manila
- 1996 The Infinity Machine, Sherman Galleries Goodhope, Sydney Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Head on a Plate, New York Studio School, New York
The White Hybrid (Fading), performance, Artspace, Cowper Wharf/Artspace, Sydney
Unword, performance, University of Western Australia
- 1997 Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
- 1998 Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne Michael Milburn Galleries, Brisbane
Female Factory, 7 hour performance, 25.4 Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
Blood Box, 24 hour performance, 6.9/7.9, Artspace, Sydney
Boubialla Couta, (performance), College of Fine Arts, Sydney
The Rest of Time, Sherman Galleries Goodhope, Sydney
Mike Parr, Sherman Galleries Hargrave, Sydney
Photo-Realism, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
- 1999 Deep Sleep [The Analytical Disabling of Mind and Matter], Nixon/Parr, 72 hour performance, 17.6-20.6, National Portrait Gallery & Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra
Wrong Face, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Three Collaborations, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney
- 2000 ARCO, International Contemporary Art Fair, Parque Serial Juan Carosl, Madrid
Shallow Grave, 3 day performance, 7.7-9.7 12th Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- Selected Group Exhibitions
- 1971 The Situation Now, Contemporary Art Society, Central Street Gallery, 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
- 1973 Artists' Books, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Recent Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1977 10th biennale de Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
- 1979 3rd Biennale of Sydney: European Dialogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1980 XXXIX Biennale di Venezia, Giardini, Venice
- 1981 Australian Perspecta 1981: A biennial survey of contemporary Australian art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1982 Eureka! Artists from Australia, Institute of Contemporary Art and Serpentine Gallery, London
- 1983 Presence & Absence: Survey of Contemporary Australian Art, No. 1, installation, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Tall Poppies, an exhibition of five pictures, University Art Gallery, University of Melbourne
D'un autre continent 'L'Australie, Le réve et le réel', ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
- 1984-5 An Australian Accent, Three Artists, Mike Parr, Imants Tillers, Ken Unsworth, P.S.1 (Project Studios One), The Institute of Art and Urban Resources, Inc., New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1985 5/5, Fünf Vom Fünften, daadgalerie, Berlin
Australian Perspecta 85,Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1986 Prospect '86, An International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
Origins, Originality & Beyond, The Sixth Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay, Sydney
- 1987-9 The Australian Bicentennial Perspecta, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Steirnernes Haus, Frankfurt; Württemburgischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart
- 1988 1988 Australian Biennale. From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art c.1940-1988, The Seventh Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
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
- 1994 Adelaide Installations, the 1994 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Adelaide
- 1995 Antipodean Currents: 10 Contemporary Artists from Australia, Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York
- 1996 Systems End: Contemporary Art in Australia, OXY Gallery, Osaka; Hakone Open-Air Museum, Tokyo; Dong-Ah Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Spirit & Place: Art in Australia 1861-1996, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
- 1997 Dead Sun, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Curator: Mike Parr; Dead Sun, performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Body, Art Gallery of New South Wales
In Place (Out of Time): Contemporary Art in Australia, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
- 1998 Wounds: Between Democracy and Redemption in Contemporary Art, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
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 Germany
Telling Tales, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1999 Southern Reflections: Ten Contemporary Australian Artists, touring Northern Europe Other Stories: Five Australian Artists, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan
Five Continents and One City. Curator: Gao Minglu, Mexico City Gallery, Mexico The Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool, UK
Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, Queens Museum, The Walker Art Centre, Miami Art Centre and other American Museums, 1999/00
- 2000 The 12th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney Biennale 2000, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Museum of Contemporary Art; Artspace and other venues