Since the 1960s Mike Parr has been defining performance art. Known for his performances of extremis, from hacking off a fake arm (with indelible realism), stitching his lips, piercing and cutting his body, to burying himself underneath a Tasmanian road for three days. Most recent are Parr’s “blind performances” where, with eyes firmly shut, he paints gallery walls under various self-imposed rules or contexts. He tests himself and his audience.
Underneath any shock value, whether across performance, printmaking, drawing or sculpture, is an interrogation of subjectivity and self-portraiture, questioning the possibility for both authentic personal and political expression. With a new, three-part exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Parr talks about catharsis, interacting with the institutionalisation of performance art (the label didn’t even exist when he first started) and how he’s rethinking the motivations behind his art.
“If you were going to do performance, you had to go from inner necessity to collective necessity; the performance had to grip something that was latent to the imagination of the situation of art at that time.”
— MIKE PARR
TIARNEY MIEKUS
In various reflections on your work, whether by yourself or others, the word “cathartic” often comes up, but its use can be ambivalent. Do you find catharsis to be an important reaction for yourself when performing, or for the audience to feel?
MIKE PARR
I think it cuts both ways. It’s cathartic for me because people often ask me, “Why are your performances so extreme?” And I say, “Well, they enable me to think.” I add that I do a lot of thinking and writing in advance of deciding to do a performance, and invariably I come up with a script that condenses the thoughts that are driving the performance. But when I say that performance
