Mike Parr

Mike Parr is an Australian 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.

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 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.

In 1970, with Peter Kennedy (born 1945 ) 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.

It was an important space for artists from 1971 to 1972.

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 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, on 16 December 2023.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

Selected Solo Exhibitions