MIKE PARR at ANNA SCHWARTZ GALLERY

Yesterday in the main gallery at Anna Schwartz the walls were graced with large-scale, gestural paintings. Black paint on white walls. Monolithic The aftermath of a performance by Mike Parr, revealed in the video projected onto the back wall. The artist carefully climbs an A-frame ladder. His eyes are closed as he dips the brush and paints on the surface using wide, long stokes. His arm cocked and stretched as he covers a section of wall in front of him. The performance is precarious. He is painting whilst being essentially blind to the surface on which he paints. The viewer understands that the darkness within his closed eyes is demonstrated by externalizing the blackness that forms a direct contrast to the whiteness of the wall. A binary, black, white. I wondered briefly if this was a commentary on race or something else. Perhaps a attempt to draw them together in harmony. A spiritual endeavor. Something too about the mind’s eye - what we see or imagine within our psyche. It was a visceral experience for me as the movement of the camera and the ensuing movement of his performance created a kind of vertigo that I imagined the artist too must have been experiencing in his temporary blindness on that potentially unstable ladder. He could fall. But didn’t. In the end I projected my own idea of the whole installation. It was for me a commentary on the void created by the pandemic. A blackness that cannot be articulated. Personal, universal. I’d been working on two black drawings myself in the past few days. There is definitely something in the air

Nameless face in a landscape

Pencil & watercolor on 56 x 76 cm Moulin du Roy paper.

Julie Clarke (c) 2018

I'm happy to report that 100 people have read my view on Mike Parr's performance (according to Google Analytics on my blog site.) It was good to see that he survived his burial and also good to see that his performance was featured several times on ABC TV. I would still like to know why some indigenous folk felt that they needed to be consulted by him prior to his performance. Sure, he read or at least had a copy of The Fatal Shore with him underground, but beyond that I don't really see the significance of his performance in relation to indigenous culture. Perhaps it was simply that vital parts of our history have been buried? Anyway, I finally began a new drawing pictured above and yes, it has quite a light, soft feel to the nameless, face in the landscape.

MIKE PARR: PREMATURE BURIAL/DARK MOFO

Some images remain fixed in your psyche, forever embedded like a sharp steel instrument pierced through the eye to your brain. Those images are not always about body horror as depicted in film genre, but often generated by psychological fears. One such film I saw when I was a young person and I've never forgotten was  Premature Burial (Roger Corman, 1962) in which the main protagonist Guy Carrell (Ray Millan) suffered from cataleptic attacks occasioning him to have a pulse so faint that he might be considered dead. His very real fear was that he may be buried alive. Paranoid about his predicament he constructs a coffin with what he considers fail safe devices so that he can continue to breathe whilst underground and a communication device to herald help for his obviously desperate situation. The conclusion to the film is terrifying.

When I heard that Australian performance artist Mike Parr intends to have himself buried alive beneath the bitumen below Macquarie Street, Hobart on 14 June this year as part of Dark MOFO I immediately thought of Premature Burial and the psychological fears that undertaking such a task may invoke. Of course it's not the same because Parr will be interred in a steel container measuring 4.5 x 1.7 x 2.2m. It will contain a fan forced air supply and he will have water, but no food, a meditation stool and sketching materials.

Parr will be underground for three days and as such immediately invokes Christian scripture, especially Corinthian 15:4 that states Jesus Christ was 'raised on the third day'. Contentious always is whether Christ was dead and raised up by God or whether he was still alive when placed in the tomb and walked out of his own volition having survived his ordeal on the cross. Parr's interrment evokes this idea of death and resurrection and that other political word 'internment' which refers to those refugees interned in substandard accommodation in Australian detention centers with little to do except ponder their dire situation. Parr who will be alive underground as the traffic passes over him creates an interesting proposition since we, the general public will not be able to see what he is actually doing and as such will draw upon our own possible fears of claustrophobia even though Parr is adept at remaining still and controlling his mind. We really cant help projecting our own anxiety onto others.

Performance artists use their own bodies as art material and rely on the audience witnessing their performance. In this case those present will only see Parr's entry into the underground encasement and his departure from it. I'm almost certain that Parr's entrance and exit will be surrounded by the spectacle of the audience, which may be considered part of the performance.

Parr addressed the absence of the artist's body in relation to an artwork early in his career in his performance Dream 2 (The Lights of Empedocles) 1982 he installed a blue chair from his artwork Parapraxis 1 in the bedroom of a friend and turned the blue light it on and off by remote control, suggesting simultaneusly the artists presence and absence.

We live in a society that generally does not freely discuss death, so in this sense Parr's performance is timely in that it asks us to contemplate our own death and burial. I won't go into it here but I can't help but think of other 'heroic' males in the public eye such as Todd Sampson and his Body Hack documentaries in which he pushes the boundaries of what the body can do. It will be interesting to see some of the discussion around Parr's performance. I for one look forward to it.

Julie Clarke (c) 2018