| Dates: | born 1945
| | Biography: | 1945 Born in Sydney, Australia.
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1998 The Rest of Time, Sherman
Galleries Goodhope, Sydney
Outrage 3, Artspace, Sydney
1996 The Infinity Machine, Sherman
Galleries Goodhope, Sydney
Head on a Plate, New York Studio
School, New York
The White Hybrid (Fading), Artspace,
Sydney
Unword, University of Western Australia,
Nedlands
1994 100 Breaths/100 Songs, Art
Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Fathers II (The Law of the Image),
Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
Waste, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney
The Bridge, The Art Gallery of New
South Wales, Sydney
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1998-99 Southern Reflections: Ten
Contemporary
Australian Artists, Touring Northern
Europe
Other Stories: Five Australian Artists
(Asialink exhibition),
Hokkajdo Museum of Modern Art,
Sapporo
1998 Wounds: Between Democracy and
Redemption in
Contemporary Art, Moderna Museet,
Stockholm
Southern Reflections: An Exhibition of
Contemporary Australian
Art to Northern Europe, Kulturhaus,
Stockholm;
Konsthallen, Gotsberg, Gothenberg;
Kunstmuseum, Arhus;
Museum Tamminiementle, Helsinki;
Neues Museum, Bremen;
Staatliche Sammlung fur Kunst,
Chemnitz
1997 Dead Sun, The Art Gallery of New
South Wales, Sydney
BODY, The Art Gallery of New South
Wales, Sydney
In Place (Out of Time): Contemporary Art
in
Australia, Museum of Modern Art,
Oxford;
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
The Fukui Biennale 7, Media and The
Human
Body, Fukui City Art Museum, Fukui
El Individuo y su Memoria: Sexta Bienal
de La Habana, Havana
1996 No Exit: The Guinness
Contemporary Art
Project, The Art Gallery of New South
Wales, Sydney
FURTHER READING
Bond, A. BODY (exh. cat.), The Art
Gallery of
New South Wales, Sydney/Bookman
Schwartz, Melbourne 1997
Bromfield, D. Identities: A Critical Study
of the Work of Mike Parr 1970-1990,
University of Western Australia Press,
Perth 1991
Coulter-Smith, G. Mike Parr: The Self
Portrait Project, Schwartz City/Bookman
Press, Melbourne 1994 | | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
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| | Description: | Mike Parr is appearing in several guises
in Liverpool. Two weeks before the
opening he will be represented live on
video during a performance in Sydney's
Artspace picked up from the Web. For
the 10 days of the performance, which is
called Water From the Mouth 7, the
artist will be sealed into a steel cube.
During this time he will attempt to speak
out loud everything that comes into his
head.
Sleep deprivation, hunger and discomfort
will ensure that his logic becomes
increasingly disturbed throughout the
period of his incarceration. Parr's second
piece is an installation entitled Water
from The Mouth 2, which also
incorporates an element of performance.
For this piece he has covered the walls
of his room with self-portraits enlarged
from original studies that he discarded
on the floor as he moved around the
space.
His working method and the scattered
drawings contribute to the sense of
urgency that is so expressively rendered
in the taught lines and gestures of the
drawings themselves. A video of the
drawing process underlines the
performative aspect of the work, while
four ghetto-blasters proclaim the manic
messages of street evangelists.
The third component, Water from The
Mouth 3, is a live performance and
subsequent projection of its
documentation in Liverpool. In a dark
room in the two hours before dawn 60
elderly men sit in rows stripped to the
waist. Lead by Parr they rhythmically
clash together 60 pairs of quartz rocks.
The bright sound of these rocks from the
Australian outback produces a
mesmerising soundtrack. In time with
these rhythms, sparks from the quartz
intermittently light up the bodies of the
men. These flashes of light herald the
coming dawn, bridging night and day.
Although this shared ritual of healing has
a deep personal significance for the
artist, whose work is strongly
autobiographical, it is intended to
address a common need. Parr has
always been concerned to make his
art 'factual' by systematically testing the
limits of his own body and mind. In this
way the personal is made to act as a
marker of the political.
| | Description Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Description Source Date: | 1999 | | Gender: | male | | Type: | person |
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